The recession was more the last kick of an already down business form, rather than a sudden shock to retail and the need for a central shopping high street.
The high street’s decline has been bruised by the recession, 1 in 5 shops stand empty in the North East and schemes are being set up to fill them temporarily until things pick up, focusing on art and creative solutions for a few months at a time.
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Before the recession, retailers were already suffering, seeing a drop in the amount of people visiting stores with more buying online, avoiding the trip to town entirely. In ...
"A monster sat down in Catford, and just what the place needed.” Ian Nairn, writing about Rodney Gordon’s Eros House in the late 1950s,
“…a staircase tower which is either afflicted with an astounding set of visual distortions or is actually leaning … the most craggy and uncompromising of new London buildings turns out to be full of firm gentleness.”
Rodney Gordon, then working for Owen Luder Associates, also sat two monsters down in Gateshead. Until this week, when the Trinity development in the addled town centre will finally be demolished after years in limbo, Gateshead could have boasted two of his few remaining buildings of the era and, in the Trinity ...
Kendal Calling festival returns for its fifth instalment this weekend with the likes of Erol Alkan, Wild Beasts, Plump DJs, British Sea Power, Calvin Harris and The Coral set to perform in the picturesque surrounds of the Lake District. We catch up with Friday night headliners Doves to talk about isolation, Shane Meadows, and latest album, Kingdom Of Rust.
Kingdom Of Rust references Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner and is arguably your most cinematic album to date. Why have you never scored a film soundtrack?
Quite simply because no one’s ever bothered to ask us. We used to drop subliminal references to films we liked in our music in the hope that some director ...
Polish artist Artur Zmijewski is undoubtedly one of the most provocative working today. Famed for creating situations that test participants' and audiences' beliefs and opinions and in which we are made brutally aware of how fragile our moral codes are, the Warsaw resident's work includes pieces such as 'Democracies' (2009), which records mass gatherings and protests through Europe and the Middle East and the seminal 'Repetition' (2005), in which Zmijewski re-enacted the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment.
Spanning his practice from 2003 to the present day, his latest exhibition - running from 30 July until 9 October - finds Zmijewski at Sunderland's Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art where he will be ...
Just to the side of the Swing Bridge on the Gateshead side, an artist has placed a rather large bell made with the metal gathered from melting down a fighter jet.
Fiona Banner, a British artist based in London, has been commissioned by Great North Culture and Locus+ to create Tornado, named after its original RAF Tornado fighter plane form, part of the Cultural Olympiad open weekend.
http://vimeo.com/13561564
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Hundreds of venues across the UK are being unveiled under the Cultural Olympiad programme to celebrate two years to go until the London Olympics.
From Saturday, the public are invited to call down from 10am ...
Celebrity chef and food campaigner Jamie Oliver has got behind a new health initiative in the region. The North East Food Discovery project - affectionately known as "Wor Lotty" - has been setup with the aim of educating kids and communities about nutrition through farm visits, food growing, cook and eat sessions and talks from local producers.
The grow-and-eat project run by Newcastle-based food charity East End Health and the Country Trust, will offer pupils from 18 local schools and their families the chance to grow and produce their own food and learn about seasonality, organics and the food heritage of the North East.
Overseen by Laura Wallace and Joanna Lacey, in ...
This Saturday Newcastle's Ouseburn Valley will see the return of NARC. Fest, with over 30 bands & DJs set to populate five venues in the area.
Part of the annual Ouseburn Festival, this year's event will find a range of local promoters and their line-ups going head to head, with music running simultaneously all night between 6pm and midnight.
Headlining The Cluny at the NARC. and Portions For Foxes run stage are Denmark’s The Kissaway Trail who promise to captivate audiences with their epic indie rock. Joining them are local artists The Dark Sky Singers, Lanterns On The Lake, The Fishing Party and Cult Image.
Over at The Cluny 2, Our Beat Is ...
Summer manifested itself during the Mouth of the Tyne Festival during the weekend, culminating in Sunday’s packed priory stage, featuring Beth Jeans Houghton, The Lighting Seeds and the highlight, Easy Star All-Stars.
The three-day event was free (apart from James Morrison), mixing different disciplines from children’s performers, market areas, cultural festivals and grander pop acts along the banks of Tynemouth and South Shields.
The Priory Stage was the most impressive part of weekend, not only for its surroundings - a stage in a ruined castle - but for the calibre and range of performers.
As part of the ¡VAMOS! festival, Violadores del Verso offered a worldly take, followed by Beth Jeans Houghton who ...
Marking its UK release on 27 August, SoulBoy is tipped to do for the soul scene what Quadrophenia did for the Mods. While that might be stretching things a little, the British production (co-produced by the North East's Ipso Facto films) nevertheless is something of a minor masterpiece. With an excellent cast led by Martin Compston and the inimitable Felicity Jones, SoulBoy – which documents the impact Northern Soul had in the North West in the early 70’s – offers an honest, heartfelt and darkly humourous depiction of the era-defining movement.
Watch our exclusive chat with producer Christine Alderson and screenwriter Jeff Williams at the film's North East premiere...
Amidst power cuts, ...
“A monster sat down in Catford, and just what the place needed.” Ian Nairn, writing about Rodney Gordon’s Eros House in the late 1950s,
“…a staircase tower which is either afflicted with an astounding set of visual distortions or is actually leaning … the most craggy and uncompromising of new London buildings turns out to be full of firm gentleness.”
Rodney Gordon, then working for Owen Luder Associates, also sat two monsters down in Gateshead. Until this week, when the Trinity development in the addled town centre will finally be demolished after years in limbo, Gateshead could have boasted two of his few remaining buildings of the era and, in the Trinity Centre, arguably his best. His Derwent Tower in Dunston was also recently scheduled for demolition. [view more…]
The recession was more the last kick of an already down business form, rather than a sudden shock to retail and the need for a central shopping high street.
The high street’s decline has been bruised by the recession, 1 in 5 shops stand empty in the North East and schemes are being set up to fill them temporarily until things pick up, focusing on art and creative solutions for a few months at a time.
Kendal Calling festival returns for its fifth instalment this weekend with the likes of Erol Alkan, Wild Beasts, Plump DJs, British Sea Power, Calvin Harris and The Coral set to perform in the picturesque surrounds of the Lake District. We catch up with Friday night headliners Doves to talk about isolation, Shane Meadows, and latest album, Kingdom Of Rust.
Kingdom Of Rust references Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner and is arguably your most cinematic album to date. Why have you never scored a film soundtrack?
Quite simply because no one’s ever bothered to ask us. We used to drop subliminal references to films we liked in our music in the hope that some director would pick up on them but they never did, so with this one we wanted to approach the subject more head on. We’re huge fans of director’s like Shane Meadows and it would be great to do something with him. He’s got great taste in music so why we haven’t already been asked already is anyone’s guess. Ha ha.
Guitarist Jez Williams recently described the record as being “schizophrenic yet cohesive” – is that the sort of thing you were going for?
That boy’s giving good quote at the moment, I’ll have to step up my game. Ha ha. In truth we didn’t have any big game plan for this one, really – we were still shuffling tracks around even until a couple of weeks before the release. I do think it’s a really strong collection of songs, though, and while we never had any sort of theme in mind, listening to it now there’s a sense of a sort of nostalgic future – you know, 50’s air stewardesses in pristine uniforms, that sort of thing. [view more…]
Polish artist Artur Zmijewski is undoubtedly one of the most provocative working today. Famed for creating situations that test participants’ and audiences’ beliefs and opinions and in which we are made brutally aware of how fragile our moral codes are, the Warsaw resident’s work includes pieces such as ‘Democracies’ (2009), which records mass gatherings and protests through Europe and the Middle East and the seminal ‘Repetition’ (2005), in which Zmijewski re-enacted the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment.
Spanning his practice from 2003 to the present day, his latest exhibition – running from 30 July until 9 October – finds Zmijewski at Sunderland’s Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art where he will be debuting an additional piece from his recent commission for AFoundation, Liverpool. [view more…]
Just to the side of the Swing Bridge on the Gateshead side, an artist has placed a rather large bell made with the metal gathered from melting down a fighter jet.
Fiona Banner, a British artist based in London, has been commissioned by Great North Culture and Locus+ to create Tornado, named after its original RAF Tornado fighter plane form, part of the Cultural Olympiad open weekend.
By opening with crisp footage of a raggedly bearded Jim Morrison, listening to the radio announcement of his own death as he drives through the Mojave Desert, an audience could be fooled into thinking director Tom DiCillo had cast a startlingly authentic lookalike in a bid to give his documentary on The Doors cinematic quality. In reality, DiCillo lifts it from Morrison’s own 1969 experimental film HWY: An American Pastoral, but not before applying a superb restoration job and a cheeky overdub to wink at the apocryphal ‘Is Jim Dead?’ conspiracy theory. [view more…]
A new exhibit at the old Hancock Museum, now Great North Museum: Hancock, delves into the cultural effect the Great North Run has had in the region over its 30 year history.
The race is one made up of elite runners, semi-professionals and nutters in fancy dress running for charity or for the Hell of it, with the exhibit displaying the way a 13.1 mile run has become the most popular half marathon in the world, and what this has done to the residents who get caught up in the event. [view more…]
Rodney Gordon, then working for Owen Luder Associates, also sat two monsters down in Gateshead. Until this week, when the Trinity development in the addled town centre will finally be demolished after years in limbo, Gateshead could have boasted two of his few remaining buildings of the era and, in the Trinity Centre, arguably his best. His Derwent Tower in Dunston was also recently scheduled for demolition. [view more…]
