No Bounds Festival: 10-12 October 2025

Sheffield Hallam partners with Treatment Studio for this year’s No Bounds Festival.

No Bounds festival returns to venues across Sheffield and Rotherham from the 10-12 October 2025, featuring new installations from artist-researchers at Sheffield Hallam University and Treatment Studio, London.

 

This programme of commissions is entitled switch room. 

switch room explores dimensional timelines spanning locality and communities, environmental activism, topographical layering, hypogeal growth, destruction and renewal. 

As seeds pushing through the grit of substrate, the debris of continuous urban regeneration reveals itself through the beauty of light and optics, mechanised through sculpture, movement and projection. These ventures in visuality expand our perceptions of graft  – physical and emotional labour, industrial endeavour, botanical ingenuity and the heft of whole systems-change-glimpses into sustainable futures. Oscillating between the long-vacated electricals warehouse and darkened siderooms in the basement of the edifice of Castle House department store, a temporal looping takes place within the pristine Igloo, a brand new 360 degree immersive space located on Sheffield Hallam University city campus.

A curated programme of projections, films and installations from Sheffield Creative Industries Institute and Treatment Studio, London, switch room unfolds into collaborations and solo explorations connected by elemental pathways and traversed through electronic music.

 

Curator and producer: Amy Carter Gordon, Associate Director: Innovation (Culture & Curation)

Creative Producer: Lauren McConnell, Innovation Development Officer

 

We strive to make our events as inclusive as possible. If you have any accessibility concerns, please contact us.

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Basement, Castle House

Angel Street, Sheffield, S3 8LN

Free entry 

Opening times

FRI 10am – 7pm

SAT 10am – 8pm

SUN 10am – 5pm

 

Group show: switch room 

A collaboration between:

• Damian Hale, Creative Director, Treatment Studio
• Prof. Jane Prophet,  Professor of Art and Design
• Matt Edgar, Associate Head of Sheffield Creative Industries Institute
• Patrick Walker, Course Leader in Graphic Design
• Jake Goodall, Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design
• Paul Allen, Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design
• Anne Doncaster, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Production
• Pam Bowman, Associate Head of Sheffield Creative Industries Institute
• metic.
  

 

 

Grit<>Graft, Analog in<>Digital out, Castle<>House. An interactive installation that plays with Sheffield’s topography and architectural heritage, reflecting the city’s ongoing transformation and greening. It invites participants to navigate physical pathways through the basement of Castle House, referencing geological underpinnings and the remains of cultural landmarks. Both meditation on regeneration and reflection on Sheffield’s capacity to reimagine itself.

Damian Hale (Treatment Studio), in collaboration with artist-researchers from Sheffield Creative Industries Institute (Sheffield Hallam University) presents a joint venture in debut and reworked archival pieces, especially for No Bounds, inspired by the themes of GRIT and GRAFT. Drawing inspiration from the myth of Gilgamesh, and the topographical and photographic histories of Sheffield, projections, sculpture, and installations transform the basement of this iconic Sheffield building into an environment that brings together themes of destruction, materiality and dance.

Credits:  

• Damian Hale – Director
• David Shepherd – Technical Director 
• Tilly Reith – Producer for Treatment Studio
• Choreographer – Ellie Bishop Williams
• Dancers – Project Female
• Tinsley Towers demolished by ITN via Getty Images 

Music:

• Track With No Name – Forgemasters 
• Gilgamesh – Simple Symmetry (feat. Iñigo Vontier) 
• Underground Genius (Roof of Sky) – Curtain Twitcher

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GRIT: Germinate and Reclaim Industrial Terrain: An unruly flowering installation for the post-industrial meadow

By Jane Prophet, Professor of Art and Design

 

Resilient plants thrive in rubble and ruins, embodying regeneration and unruly vitality. Colourful projected AI videos light cut seed-paper drawings of weeds—poppies, dandelions, bindweed—that are later recycled into a meadow.

 

 

 

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Reveries

By metic., Sheffield-based artist (and Hallam alum)

 

 

Take a look inside a dream. A profound myriad of arbitrary thoughts. Complex and colourful. Visions of the past interwoven with memories of the future. Fragmented. Ambiguous. Beautiful. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Artist Talks:

SATURDAY

12:00 Pat Walker – Concrete

13:00 metic. – Reveries

 

SUNDAY

12:00  Jake Goodall – SKIP

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South Yorkshire Institute of Technology

Strines Building, Sheffield Hallam University – City Campus, S1 2LX

Free entry

Opening times

FRI 10am – 7:00pm

SAT 10am – 7:30pm

SUN 10am – 4pm

 

Important information:

Please note that due to limited capacity in the space, each piece will be screened multiple times during a 1.5-hour period. If you arrive partway through a piece, we kindly ask that you wait for the next showing, as we are unable to admit visitors mid-performance.

There’s no need to book in advance — entry is open and based on arrival time, so you may need to queue during busy periods, but we hope your wait won’t be long.

Thank you for your patience and understanding — we’re excited to share the experience with you!

 

Artist talks: 

Throughout the weekend, artists will give informal talks about their work. There’s no fixed schedule, but a staff member will let you know when a talk is about to begin.

 

Programme

Specialist technical expertise provided by: Tanni Moyana, Digital Skills Academic Lead for Institute of Technology & Anne Doncaster, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Production

 

Bloom in 360 

By Damian Hale x Will Dutta & Plaid

A 360 reworking of 3 pieces from an ongoing audiovisual project between Will Dutta (pianist/composer) and Damian Hale (creative director/artist) featuring collaborations with electronic duo Plaid.

Run time: 15 mins

Multiple showings between: FRI 17:30 – 19:00 / SAT 16:30 – 19:30 / SUN 13:00 – 14:30

 

 

Credits: 

• Damian Hale – Director
• David Shepherd – Technical Director (Beauty Still and Tangram)
• Tilly Reith – Producer for Treatment Studio

 Featuring: 

• Tangram by Max de Wardener (performed by Will Dutta)
• A Higher Sense Of Time by Will Dutta & Plaid (vocals Ed Macfarlane) 
• Beauty Still by Will Dutta & Plaid

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Storm-Cloud 360: Fragments in Connection

Reimagined & designed by Jake Goodall, Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design

 

Following Thrown into Form at No Bounds 2024, Jake Goodall presents a new decontextualisation of Tom Payne’s Storm-Cloud in a 360 installation connecting Ruskin’s 1884 warnings with climate activism today.

Run time: 16 mins

Multiple showings between:  FRI 16:00 – 17:30 / SUN 10:00 – 11:30 

 

Credits:

Jake Goodall’s Fragments in Connection for No Bounds 2025 breaks apart and remakes Thrown into Form, condensing Tom Payne’s recorded performance, his own motion design expanded with new visual material, and David John Brady’s score, into an immersive environment without live performer. With archival research by Ashley Gallant, drawings by Billy Hughes, and photographs by Becky Payne, the installation layers fragments of past versions into a new form.

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In the Flame We Reveal Ourselves 

By Prof. Virginia Heath, Professor of Film 

 

A haunting, wordless hymn to our beautiful, burning world.  An audio-visual odyssey drawing on myth, memory and music to spark the hope that emerges when we truly face the flames. 

Run time: 15 minutes 

Multiple showings between: FRI 11:30 – 13:00 / SAT 11:30 – 13:00

 

Credits: 

• Sheffield Hallam University collaborator: Stephanie Hartle – Photography
• External collaborator: Faction North Ltd, Film Production Company

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‘Aftermath’ By Genevieve Carver

Taken from the project ‘Sheffield VeRse’ – a series of 360 video experiences

By Anne Doncaster, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Production

Aftermath is an immersive exploration of the iconic Hope Works venue that closed in February this year. This hyperlocal VR journey, originally commissioned in 2017, is reimagined as an immersive experience especially for the Igloo. 

Run time: 5 minutes

Multiple showings between: SAT 15:00 – 16:30 / SUN 11:30 – 13:00

 

For one special showing, we will be joined by poet Genevieve Carver and Hope Works founder, Liam O’Shea. Further details coming soon. 

Credits: 

• Ben Carlin – Artistic Director. Creative Producer at Ten24. XR Specialist and public speaker.
• Anne Doncaster – 360 videographer and academic researcher. Digital Media Production Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University and specialist in 360 virtual tours. 
• Joe Kriss – Content Producer. Director of ‘Word Life’ a Sheffield based poetry organisation that develops innovative projects to reach new audiences with literature. 
• Aaron Mears – Sound Designer/Producer, Freelance Sheffield based Digital Artist. 
• Poet performing: Genevieve Carver

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Cradle of Fire 

By Carolyn Waudby, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, PR & Media & Diana Scarborough, Cambridge-based international artist 

 

A film featuring poetry, rap and song, blended with recordings of industrial processes, explores the mythology of the god of fire, forges and volcanoes – a symbol of Sheffield for over 100 years. 

www.cradleoffire.com

Run time: 22:29 minutes

Multiple showings between: FRI 10 – 11:30 / SAT 13:30 – 15:00

 

 

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Augury: A time-slipped visual study of the post-industrial landscape of the Thames Estuary. 

By Prof. David Cotterrell, Research Professor in Fine Art

 

This is a quiet contemplation of an environment once shaped through the labour and industry of the world’s busiest docks, yet now defined by its near-silent, melancholic beauty.

Run time: 15 minutes 

Multiple showings between: SAT 10 – 11:30 / SUN 14:30 – 16:00