Sheffield Design Awards for Public Art

About

The Sheffield Design Awards for Public Art celebrates and promotes public artwork in Sheffield, by recognising the artworks and artists making a contribution to the city’s public realm.

Public art has a great role to play in helping to make Sheffield look and feel unique and distinctive. It helps create places and spaces that we love and cherish and can have a positive impact on our well-being.

The awards started life as the Keith Hayman Award, which was awarded annually to the best mural and best sculpture produced in the previous year. The trustees decided to expand the awards to create a larger event for the art community, celebrating the fantastic work being done across Sheffield.

The overall winner will be presented with the Keith Hayman Award, which continues the legacy of the previous format of the awards and commemorates Keith Hayman, a founder member of Sheffield Civic Trust who sadly died in 2013. He had retired from a career with Sheffield City Council where he brought his skills and commitment as town planner and environmentalist to enhancing the quality of the public realm. He was also a committed and talented artist. This award was initiated in his memory and recognises an outstanding contribution to the experience of public art in Sheffield.

The Awards

  • This award will be chosen by children at Windmill Hill Primary School from all shortlisted entries to the Awards.

  • The People’s Choice Award is selected from all shortlisted entries to the Sheffield Design Awards for Public Art via an online vote that is open to everyone

  • This award is given to the best sculpture (three dimensional).

  • This awards is given to the best permanent mural.

  • This award will be given to the best artwork painted onto security shutters.

  • This will be awarded to the best non-permanent artwork. For example, a mural painted onto a temporary hoarding, or a temporary installation.

  • Artist of the Year is chosen from all entries to the awards with an emphasis on multiple artworks of a high standard completed by the same artist.

  • Overall prize winner which is selected from winners of all of the other categories.

  • This award recognises an existing artwork worthy of recognition for its impact on Sheffield’s public realm.

2025 Judges

  • Kate Dore

    Kate Dore

    HEAD JUDGE

    Kate has over 30 years’ experience of working in the creative, cultural and not-for-profit sector and is equally passionate about developing creative spaces and supporting public engagement with creativity. Having been involved in the commissioning of public art for many years, she is really enjoying the new artworks that are forming an essential part of our new city centre development and also flourishing in our neighbourhoods.

    For Yorkshire Artspace, Kate devised, developed, delivered and managed two major capital projects: the award-winning Persistence Works with Feilden Clegg Bradley, and Exchange Place Studios - a refurbishment of an Art Deco beauty. At Manor Oaks and Knutton Road Studios she supported the development of two neighbourhood studio complexes with social enterprise partners.

    In 2020 she established Kate Dore Consulting to support organisations during periods of strategic change and growth. She also hosts free surgeries for studio managers across the UK to share good practice and offer mutual support.

    Her interest in both contemporary and historical art and architecture guides her work and leisure time. Kate has been a judge for the RIBA (North West and North East) and Sheffield Design Awards where her experience as a client offers a valuable perspective.

  • Matt Hayman

    Matt Hayman

    Matt, like his dad Keith in whose memory these Public Art awards were initiated, developed a fascination with cities. Matt has over 25 years of experience working in urban regeneration in local authority, holding a degree in Urban Development, and master’s in Urban Regeneration. 

    Matt has worked extensively on regeneration strategy and schemes across Sheffield City Centre, leading on the delivery of wide-ranging projects from concept to delivery. These have included masterplans, public-private partnership mixed-use developments, funding strategy and bids, compulsory purchase orders, strategic site acquisitions/disposals, public and stakeholder consultations, public realm/infrastructure and new green spaces including public art commissions and even a lighting scheme for an iconic brutalist sub-station.

  • Joanne Lee

    Joanne Lee

    Joanne Lee is an artist, writer and Course Leader for BA Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University. She has worked in art and design education for over thirty years, teaching across Fine Art, Graphic Design, Illustration, Film and Media. Her creative practice involves photography, installation and publication, focusing on the local and everyday, and on connections with the more than human world. She is a Trustee at Carousel Print Studio. 

    Jo works as part of a group of artist-teachers on Smatterings (studio matterings), which investigates ‘studioing’ as a method. This work has been shared at a number of recent events including the Creative Pedagogies strand of the AMPS Research and Teaching conference, Czech Technical University (2025); Have Some Imagination, Baltic x Northumbria University (2025); The Art of Resistance, National Association of Fine Art Education (2024); Essential not Optional: Celebrating the Arts in Higher Education, University of Lincoln (2024); On Not Knowing: How to Teach, Glasgow School of Art x UniArts, Helsinki (2023). 

  • Alex Maxwell