Ivor Wallace

A Page Hall Pioneer?

A while ago, there was an idea that the terraced housing in Page Hall should be demolished to allow the area to be “renewed”. Helped by over 330 local residents, the Area Panel and the City Council decided that this wouldn’t happen in Page Hall. Out of this campaign emerged a small group of residents who wanted to make sure that never again would Page Hall be a victim of decision-making. And although Ivor Wallace was not too well at this moment, and had little interest in the community in which he’d lived for many years, when someone knocked on his door and said that his home was to be demolished – he started to think about a better future.

Ivor’s job as an estimator in the steel industry requires him to uphold the one thing that the word Sheffield triggers around the world – “quality”. And Ivor wanted to make sure that a neighbourhood like Page Hall can stand for “quality” if the local residents worked with each other and with agencies and organisations.

Ivor himself will and would be the first to say that the development of Page Hall Community Association is not just down to him. But it’s people like Ivor who make that little difference in their determination not to be put off by the difficulties and size of the problem when you first start developing community groups. Initially, working with Green City Action and the local regeneration team, Page Hall ran an In Bloom display in 2006. Again, they did it again in 2007 and were widely acknowledged for the effort – especially with the hanging baskets; not only organised, but planted and watered and maintained…

Trying to respond sensitively and positively to the way in which Page Hall is changing – with new arrivals from Eastern Europe – is now a hallmark of the way that Ivor has worked for the area. Typically, there are other under-stated ways that he has discovered to build a unity between residents and local school students – for example, Ivor is a regular attender at the School Council meetings at the nearby Fir Vale Secondary to listen to what the students are saying and also to take back their message to the community. The Panel hopes that the work of Ivor for all the people of Page Hall will begin to show more and more positive results.