Why a Newcastle city centre building colonised by artists will soon be empty again

Norham House, round the corner from the Odeon on Pilgrim Street, has been home to a thriving creative community

BY DAVID WHETSTONE

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/newcastle-city-centre-building-colonised-12687355

3rd March 2017

Artists who brought new life to one of Newcastle city centre’s giant former office blocks are packing up and moving.

Their final exhibition – called Moving On Up, Moving On Out – finishes on Saturday and that will be the end of Norham House as a cultural venue.

The building on New Bridge Street, opposite Newcastle City Library, is on the East Pilgrim Street site which the city council has earmarked for major regeneration.

Eventually it will be demolished like the old Odeon, on nearby Pilgrim Street, which was on the same site.

But it has brought into question the value of having clusters of mostly young artists and creative people in the centre of a university city which has long prided itself on its culture and vibrancy.

It was in 2010 that a pair of young fine art graduates were handed the keys to empty Norham House as part of a scheme to keep the city centre alive during the recession when a lot of development projects got put on hold.

Previously its five storeys had been occupied by lawyers and accountants. Now the artists invited others to join them, paying a peppercorn rent.

Norham House became better known as The NewBridge Project with a street level gallery and bookshop and a warren of studios, workshops and exhibition spaces.

It has run a programme of exhibitions, talks and other events and has been a popular destination during the annual Late Shows in Newcastle and Gateshead.

Charlotte Gregory, who studied fine art at Newcastle University, became director of The NewBridge Project in 2014.

She said the artists had been given six months’ notice to leave the building back in October.

“Norham House includes the bookshop and gallery and there’s also the Maker Space next door and the Alphabetti Theatre underneath,” she said.

“Then there are the 80 studios we have upstairs along with workshops, a dark room, a film lab and also a rehearsal space and project spaces.

“Nearly 100 people regularly work here but if you think of our public bookshop, gallery and events, there are a lot more people that benefit from these spaces.”

Charlotte said the eventual move had always been anticipated but that didn’t make it easier.

“I think it’s quite difficult for a lot of people because we’ve been here for nearly seven years now.

“It forms a big part of people’s lives because it’s not just a work space, it’s about a sense of community and being surrounded by a network of your peers.

“A lot of development work happens here and there are opportunities for commissions and exhibitions.

“It has sparked a lot of things for people, enabling them to continue their creative careers and remain in the city.

“A lot of our studio holders studied at Newcastle and Northumbria universities, and even at Sunderland, and have said they would have moved away if it hadn’t been for things like NewBridge because it’s affordable and there’s an openness.

“There’s a grassroots feel with the sense that anybody can get involved.

“So there was initially a lot of sadness and a sense of loss. But there has also been a sense of camaraderie. It has brought people closer together and there has even been a sense of excitement about creating the next space.”


It’s not the end for the NewBridge artists who have been given the chance to relocate to Carliol House, a Grade II-listed building in the same ownership on the corner of Market Street and Pilgrim Street.

“The landlords have been quite accommodating, allowing us to have that six months, and the council have been very supportive in helping with the relocation,” Charlotte said.

“For this building we’re signing a two-year lease. It’s slightly smaller so I think we’re going to have to use it in a slightly different way.

“But we have also been looking for a more secure space which would be sustainable for the longer term.”

Charlotte said places like NewBridge were “incredibly important” for cities such as Newcastle which boasted big cultural venues.

“If you have places like Baltic and Northern Stage you want young creative people to stay in the region and places like NewBridge allow a really experimental approach.”


Charlotte said The NewBridge Project had worked closely with Newcastle University and had commissioned a study by academic Dr Martyn Hudson, looking at the social and economic impact of its work.

This was launched at Norham House this week with high profile speakers supporting the idea of creative hubs in the city centre.

Sarah Munro, director of Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, said places like NewBridge were “absolutely critical” to Baltic and an important constituent of the region’s cultural scene.

They ensured a community of artists with a “high quality practice” and a culture of experimentation.

Artists and smaller arts organisations she likened to bees. “They’re really tiny but you take them out of a system and it collapses.”

Hans Möller, innovation director of the North East LEP (Local Enterprise Partnership), said “creative people doing creative things” were important economically and socially.

“Creative/digital is one of the sectors we’re focusing on because you can get access to funding for it,” he said.

“We need to be better at supporting start-ups in the digital sector.”

John Tomaney, professor of urban and regional planning at University College London but based in the North East, suggested the value of places like NewBridge shouldn’t be measured purely in economic terms.

“The biggest problem facing Newcastle and the North East is a problem of civic disenchantment which was best expressed in Brexit,” he argued.

“In terms of the impact and value of NewBridge, rather than its economic value we should be asking, ‘What does it contribute to the city and region as a decent place to live for the majority of people?’

“It’s a massive, massive question but worthy of discussion.”

Earlier Tom Warburton, director of investment and development at Newcastle City Council, said: “They have really worked hard, the artists there.

“They have been on low rents but they have created quite a creative fulcrum so, from the council’s point of view, we’ll continue to liaise with them to keep the vibe going.”

But the council, while it doesn’t own the buildings, is keen to see the redevelopment of East Pilgrim Street which it regards as one of the most strategically important in the north of England.

It, of course, will benefit from the business rates paid by the eventual occupants of the Northam House area which has been earmarked for retail development.

Norham House, like other buildings on the East Pilgrim Street site, is managed by Motcomb Estates on behalf of Taras Properties, a company owned by David and Simon Reuben, billionaire property developers.

A spokesman for Motcomb Estates’ agents in Newcastle, GVA, said no date had been announced for the demolition of any of the buildings but the work would be phased.

Meanwhile the artists keep ducking and diving, adding colour and variety to urban life.

For more about The Newbridge Project go to www.thenewbridgeproject.com

Artists come from around the world to study in Newcastle - meet some of them here

The annual Master of Fine Art degree show has opened at Newcastle University and is full of surprises

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/artists-come-around-world-study-11775389

• BY DAVID WHETSTONE

Liying Zhao and Mehan Fernando preparing for the MFA Exhibition at Newcastle University

People cross continents to study for a masters degree in fine art at Newcastle Universityand for the next couple of weeks we can see what they get up to.

The MFA exhibition 2016 features the work of 13 artists who have a passion for art and could go on to great things.

I was lucky enough to get a guided tour before the official preview.

“Edible sculpture, fantastical beasts, illuminated mountains and a working film set” were promised. Who could resist?

My guide was Pipi Lovell-Smith from New Zealand who has just completed the first year of the two-year course (first and second year students are represented in the exhibition along with three PhD students).

Each student on the MFA course gets a studio in which to work and exhibit. This is an exhibition of mini exhibitions.

Pipi’s is called The Perilous Cliff and it features a video shot in the North East and Switzerland where she ventured earlier this year on a Bartlett Travel Scholarship.

“I got really bad vertigo the whole time,” explained Pipi who suffered for her art.

She said she had bought an album of photographs from an antique shop in New Zealand which appeared to chart an Englishman’s grand tour in the 1930s.

“I bought it years ago but I was keen to find the exact locations that he went to. He went to other places, France and Germany, but I decided to focus on one country.

“It took quite a long time and I was hiking through forests to find the exact spots. Some were easier to find because they have been tourist spots for a century but there was a glacier that no longer exists.”

Who was the mystery man? Pipi has a name but isn’t sure if his identity is the point of her interest. As she explained, the MFA course was a chance to explore.

“It’s a great opportunity to push yourself and try new things. I applied with my paintings but when I got here I started making films.”

Pipi worked in TV production before deciding to push her creativity in a different direction.

But why Newcastle University? “Because the art school has a really good reputation. Coming from a creative industry I was keen to make more of my own work and this course gives me time and space to explore ideas.”

Hannah Elizabeth Cooper with her paintings in the MFA Exhibition at Newcastle University

Hannah Elizabeth Cooper is a painter from Ohio whose exhibition of abstracts in oils is called Cope.

She came here for different reasons. “I’ve always had a taste for foreign culture and as I only speak English it would have to be an English-speaking country,” she said.

“I’m from a village of 3,000 people. I’m a small town girl and coming to a city, even one the size of Newcastle, is a big step for me.”

Hannah said she had enjoyed her first year. “The instructors are very helpful and want you to succeed.”

She had worked in the past with mixed media, notably glass and sawdust, but was currently using oils.

The paintings, she said, were a sort of coping mechanism and she saw them as having personalities. “That’s the obnoxious one,” she said. “It just didn’t want to cooperate.”

The paintings were “not supposed to be anything that you can recognise”. People would see in them what they wanted to see.

Hannah said: “A lot of the time I paint in the moment. Sometimes I’m confused by the colours I use. They come about in such a strange way.”

Jim Lloyd lives in Hexham and for 18 years has worked at the RVI in its nuclear medicine department, a branch of radiology.

“I’m a scientist by background but one of the things I’m interested in is how science and art interact,” he said.

He took the science route, taking a first degree in physics and then studying for an MSc in medical physics and a PhD.

But he is the son of a distinguished artist, RJ Lloyd, who was a friend of sculptor Henry Moore and also of Ted Hughes whose poems he illustrated.

“Probably I went into science because I could see what a precarious life it was but I’ve always had an interest in art and I’ve dabbled over the years.

“I started to take it more seriously in 2007 when I began studying for a BA with the Open College of the Arts.”

At 56 he is planning a change of direction.

His contribution to the MFA exhibition is We Have Never Been Modern, the title taken from a book by French philosopher Bruno Latour.

He has made a corridor entrance to his darkened studio with draped sheets bearing various painted marks, some mimicking the texture of the floor.

A video charts a mysterious journey, made more eerie by music and voices (actually those of late scientists David Bohm and Francesco Varela) heard through headphones.

Jim said the filmed journey was actually his daily commute from Hexham. There were “lots of different strands,” he said, adding that there were perhaps too many. It’s intriguing, though... and he’s learning.

Liying Zhao with one of her projections in the MFA Exhibition at Newcastle University

Liying Zhao, from China, deftly uses projections to wonderful effect in her show, Nameless Wild.

She said her initial idea had been to add nothing to a room containing just a sink, a radiator and a table. “I wanted to build up a zoo in this human space, this architectural environment.

“I wanted to pose a question to viewers about human activities and nature.”

The result is magical – a projected ‘flower’ of human hands on one wall and, apparently balancing on a tap, a little person with a hippo’s head fishing in the ceramic sink below.

There’s a projected tiger-headed woman watering real grasses arranged in the radiator.

“I like to keep my work in between the real and the imagined and I like to put my own narratives into the actual space,” said Zhao.

She considered engaging a model but then decided to pose as the animal creatures herself.

Coming to the end of her two years, Zhao is going home for the first time next month. “I’m so excited,” she said. She will go home and, I suspect, go far.

Other exhibitors are Anna MacRae, Harriet Sutcliffe, Michael Mulvihill, Yein Son, Bex Harvey, Helen Shaddock, Mirela Bistran, James Quin and Mehan Fernando.

The exhibition is on at Newcastle University fine art department until September 3 (closed Sundays) and admission is free. Find details at http://fineart.ncl.ac.uk/ma2016/