Creative Places: Gateshead Culture Strategy

As part of this exercise, we met with creative industries, cultural organisations, council services, community groups, creative practitioners, and businesses. Across each group there was optimism that Gateshead has a bright cultural future. There was significant agreement that:

• Gateshead's communities are its leading asset
• culture occurs everywhere across Gateshead in the town, Quayside, and across its rural areas
• Gateshead's history and heritage are a key part of its cultural offer
• the borough benefits from an excellent education provision, including in further education, and it benefits from proximity to universities in Newcastle and Sunderland
• it is still financially possible to live and set up a creative/cultural business in Gateshead. This affordability encourages and nurtures creative people
• there is the basis of a strong cultural ecosystem with a range of organisations doing a range of activities for and with communities across Gateshead, everything from arts and crafts to music production
• the borough is full of beautiful green spaces with the opportunity to enliven them even further with public art, events, interactive trails, way finding, and online materials
• Gateshead has had success in running events and should be ambitious in doing more of them
• there is a strong civic infrastructure ranging from volunteers, to council owned assets, to community organisations, that work together to improve the creative life of the borough

Equally, while there is consensus that Gateshead has much to be proud of there is much more that it could be doing. Some of the areas highlighted by groups in Gateshead that this strategy seeks to address includes:

• how the council can balance its strategic support between assets of national profile, community groups, and wider budget pressures driven by growing demand for services such as social care
• maintaining Gateshead's distinct identity with a strong contribution within the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority (NEMSA)
• external perception of what Gateshead could be which does not reflect its ambitions plans or growing creative industries sector. This is both a challenge to bringing in national and regional funds and a challenge in ensuring Gateshead receives national attention
• the social and geographic isolation of some communities in Gateshead through poor infrastructure, financial hardship, and poor health. The widespread geography of Gateshead with a singular "Gateshead identity" as well as residents identifying strongly with their local area
• there is lots of culturally led community activity but less of a sense that communities come together across the borough
• a challenge in accessing resources necessary for organisations to flourish including buildings, cash, infrastructure, materials, and public attention
• ensuring that the basics are right including clean streets, safety and access to good services, as a pre-requisite for building a thriving cultural economy