Reflections on Newcastle Culture Partnership - Place: a blog post by Annie Rigby

Artistic Director Annie Rigby reflects on the Newcastle Culture Partnership meeting that took place at Live Theatre on Thursday 19 February 2026 and focused on the topic of Place, one of the themes in the city-wide cultural strategy.

This blog is an attempt to capture conversations at an event attended by 100+ people, where ideas spilled out across Live Theatre’s spaces. It’s an impossible challenge to capture it all. So I’m going to start with an overheard comment that has stayed with me.

“Let’s start by doing.”

The event was the first of a series of six themed gatherings convened by Newcastle Culture Partnership. It explored ‘Place’ and asked, “What can we do together that we can’t do alone?”

Discussion groups gathered and conversations sparked.

There were conversations about how to reignite Newcastle's international presence – from looking to key partners, to putting the city’s international communities at the heart of planning, to fundraising for travel bursaries to build relationships and ambition.

Around another table, people talked about the great work happening in the heart of local neighbourhoods. About how to better map and profile this work, so grassroots organisations can be stronger voices in strategic planning and ambitious collaborations.

Across the conversations there was an appetite for artist-centred thinking, inspired by work like Ireland’s Basic Income for the Arts and Tees Valley Artist of the Year. The precarity of freelancers’ livelihoods was a key theme, as well as enabling artists’ voices to inspire and shape distinctive creative ambitions for Newcastle.

There was a sense of communication gaps – between sport and arts, institutions and artists, communities and decision makers, digital and heritage specialists. How can we communicate better to share learning, address barriers, spark ideas and work more effectively?

And of course, alongside all of that, in a group discussion called ‘Anything Else?’ (usually the most important conversation in any room) - a question was asked about Newcastle’s cultural strategy. Do the current priorities still feel right? How might they be reshaped and what else might be added?

So, what’s next?

The final conversation of the day invited people to shape the next steps for Newcastle Culture Partnership. People wrote ideas on post-it notes. Here’s just some of what was suggested: 

  • We need to establish a working group.

  • Artists and freelancers need to be involved and paid for their time.

  • Don’t over-structure it.

  • Start with doing. Choose 2-3 things to do and learn by doing.

  • Create a roadmap to set out the focus and goals for the coming months.

  • Share information via a newsletter.

  • Work with communities under-represented in the room. Programme events in different parts of the city. Make sure we engage the widest possible voices.

  • Build a mechanism for this group to feed into big bids and planning.

  • Ensure political buy in and continuing dialogue outside of events.

So, “let’s start by doing”.

Get in touch if you’d like to get involved in the next steps of Newcastle Culture Partnership.

Are you interested in joining a working group? Do you run a space that could host an event? Or is there something else you could offer?

Drop me an email on annie@unfoldingtheatre.co.uk  

Notices and Info to Share

February’s event saw five brilliant speakers share information about upcoming opportunities and programmes. If you weren’t able to be there, you can find out more here:

 Finally, at the event and since, a few people asked us to share information.

 Regarding the conversation about unions, an attendee asked us to share info about existing unions that represent artists and creatives - Artists Union England, Equity, Writers Guild and Musicians Union.

And this from Clymene at D6.

Dear friends,

Thank you for the energising conversations at Live Theatre as part of the Newcastle Culture Partnership last week.

As I briefly mentioned at the end, D6 has been working on a UK and EU level to contribute to high level meetings on strengthening the UK’s cultural ties to Europe.  We are aware of x 3 campaigns which target the PPA  (Parliamentary Partnership Assembly) which is a group of UK MP’s and EU MEPs who meet every six months to discuss the Trade Agreement which is due to be reset this year (10 years since Brexit). The next meeting is in March.

The Forum on EU-UK Cultural & Media Relations has just started a petition: United Kingdom to join the Creative Europe programme from 2027.

We’ve signed as individuals and it’s open to UK and EU citizens. It’s a vital opportunity for the arts and culture sector in the UK and EU to speak up on the need to rebuild closer cultural relations with Europe and pave the way for future collaboration between artists and organisations in the EU and UK.   

 

Victoria Sanderson