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Sheffield Hallam University’s Future Now Projects programme has partnered with local hospice charity, St Luke’s – Sheffield’s Hospice.

St Luke’s – Sheffield’s Hospice, which operates in Sheffield and surrounding areas, supports people aged 18 and above with terminal illnesses, as well as their families and their loved ones, with medical and holistic care from the point of diagnosis and beyond.

With 14 shops across Sheffield, St Luke’s are entirely dependent on donations to stock their stores. In 2023, the charity opened a brand-new concept store on The Moor, selling pre-loved, unique, curated, and eco-conscious fashion.

This new store was given a unique visual design to feel at home next to H&M, Monki, Urban Outfitters, Glass Onion, and other traditional fashion retail brands already on the high street and encourage more students and young people to shop there.

As a city centre store, only a five minute walk away from Sheffield Hallam University buildings, it meant that the new store, St Luke’s The Moor, became a natural fit to allow the charity to explore links with students and the university going forward.

Therefore, since the launch of St Luke’s The Moor, six projects have been created to bring real-world issues and challenges into courses for almost 300 students. This has spanned Art & Design, Culture & Media, Law & Criminology, and Psych, Sociology & Politics, and gives Hallam students the opportunity to apply what they have learnt.

The aim is for Sheffield Hallam University and St Luke’s – Sheffield’s Hospice to work together to support Sheffield students, whilst raising awareness and understanding of a local charity and its work to a younger audience.

The Future Now programme, which supports the University’s ‘Knowledge Applied’ ethos, provides students with opportunities to collaborate with peers, communities, researchers, businesses and enterprises to tackle key societal issues in Sheffield and South Yorkshire.
By integrating real-world issues into student courses, we foster empathy, critical thinking, and social responsibility, with real-life experience, which will help our students shape a meaningful future that we can be proud of.

These projects involve clothing customisation and upcycling, end of life design, store design, store residency, magazine creation, digital media, research and more.

They allow students to provide creative solutions which present new ideas for the charity to consider across their retail chain and clinical departments. This means that the collaboration not only benefits education, by providing students with real-world experiences, but also public health. Student’s enhanced learning and fresh ideas have been able to impact the healthcare and support St Luke’s provides.

In addition, the students’ work, so far, has helped to break down stigmas and taboo, breaking down uncomfortable conversations about death and traditional gender barriers to help St Luke’s find new ways to approach diversity and inclusion in talking to its audiences.