City recreated in Minecraft with help of residents

The city of Sheffield is being rebuilt in Minecraft - and residents are being encouraged to add their own landmarks to the virtual world.

In Sheffield of Stories: The Big Sheffield Build - designed by digital artist Adam Clarke - members of the public are asked to join in and build their favourite place in the city either from the past, present or future.

The finished product will be presented at Sheffield Doc Fest's Alternative Realities Exhibition in June.

"I wanted to create something that inspired people, that made people think differently and how they reacted to familiar places," Clarke explains.

"They might build their own home, or they might build their grandparents' home, or any kind of building within the plots around the area.

"Minecraft becomes this alternative space, which is great for storytelling, great for reflecting."

Minecraft was first released in 2011 and is described as a "sandbox game" in which players can build and explore worlds made up of 3D blocks or "voxels".

Finding huge success, particularly with a younger audience, it has since spawned several spin-off games and a 2025 film starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa.

The National Video Game Museum in Sheffield is running drop-in "build" events this weekend, for people looking to contribute to the map with creations of their own.

Eight-year-old Jackson is a keen Minecraft player and attended one of the sessions.

His favourite part of Minecraft was "surviving and exploring the world", he said.

If he could build anything in Sheffield city centre in the real world, he'd add "more community buildings".

Otis, 10, was using his time to build a bank for Minecraft Sheffield.

"I'm not really a buildings person but I try to make it look all fancy," he said.

He's played the video game for around a year and "just loves it all so much", he added.

Leah Dungay, learning and community curator at the National Video Game Museum, said the project aimed to encourage people to engage with their home city.

"It's been really interesting to see - we've had aquariums, recreations of our football stadiums, and really personal places," she said.

"It's just such an open and creative space. Imagine a sandbox in the playground, you can sit down and build absolutely anything - it has so much potential."

As part of the project, contributors have recorded their stories and memories of Sheffield, which will be animated as Minecraft characters and played throughout.

"Minecraft can be a medium, it can be almost be like a documentary," Clarke added.

"We can actually use it to tell stories, tell our own stories, in the past, the present, and hopefully things that we think about in the future."

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