The Late Shows are a one weekend annual cultural initiative developed in Tyne & Wear since 2007. They are intended to attract new audiences to museums and galleries. They have become the largest programme [1] organised in the United Kingdom for the 'Museums at Night Festival'.
The programme started as a one-night event with 14 cultural venues taking part including Discovery Museum, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Laing Art Gallery. All the venues stayed open late and put on free events and exhibitions, which aimed to entice a new, younger audience through their doors. From the outset many different agencies came together to open their doors and this has continued. In mid-May 2013, more than 50 attractions feature in what an arts site for the region described as "the North East's legendary culture crawl". [2] An Arts Council of England case study demonstrates its impact. [3] That report gives headline information thus:
In 2009, 54 events held over two nights across the 29 venues taking part attracted 15,116 visitors. This involved nine commissions, 126 artists and four education sessions. The total audience, including print, broadcast and online was 701,800. The Late Shows 2010 has built on that success with over 19,500 people heading to Newcastle/Gateshead's museums and galleries after-hours.
We supported The Late Shows with £25,000 of National Lottery funding from our Grants for the arts scheme. Support from other partner organisations included £39.974 from Culture 10, £8,703 from North East Regional Museums Hub and £17,990 of support in kind from the participating venues.
In 2013 The Late Shows were a bronze award winner at the North East England Tourism awards. [4]
Newcastle upon Tyne, or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located on the River Tyne's northern bank, opposite Gateshead to the south. It is the most populous settlement in the Tyneside conurbation and North East England.
The Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, North East England. It includes Gateshead, Rowlands Gill, Whickham, Blaydon, Ryton, Felling, Birtley, Pelaw, Dunston and Low Fell. The borough forms part of the Tyneside conurbation, centred on Newcastle upon Tyne.
Sage Gateshead is a concert venue and musical education centre in Gateshead on the south side of the River Tyne in North East England. Opened in 2004 and occupied by North Music Trust it is part of the Gateshead Quays development which includes the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Its name honors a patron: the accountancy software company The Sage Group.
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art is a centre for contemporary art located on the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. It hosts a frequently changing variety of exhibitions, events, and educational programmes with no permanent exhibition. The idea to open a centre for contemporary arts in Gateshead was developed in the 1990s, which was a time of regeneration for the local area—the Sage and Gateshead Millennium Bridge was also being conceived of in this period.
The Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, is located on New Bridge Street West. The gallery was designed in the Baroque style with Art Nouveau elements by architects Cackett & Burns Dick and is now a Grade II listed building. It was opened in 1904 and is now managed by Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums and sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. In front of the gallery is the Blue Carpet. The building, which was financed by a gift from a local wine merchant, Alexander Laing, is Grade II listed.
The Quayside is an area along the banks (quay) of the River Tyne in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead in Tyne and Wear, North East England, United Kingdom.
The Discovery Museum is a science museum and local history museum situated in Blandford Square in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It displays many exhibits of local history, including the ship, Turbinia. It is managed by Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.
Ralph Hedley was a realist painter, woodcarver and illustrator, best known for his paintings portraying scenes of everyday life in the North East of England.
John Chambers was a landscape, seascape and portrait painter in oil, tempera and watercolour, and an etcher and illustrator.
Dan Holdsworth is a British photographer who creates large-scale photographs and digital art characterized by the use of traditional techniques and unusually long exposure times, and by radical abstractions of geography. He has exhibited internationally including solo shows at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, and Barbican Art Gallery, London; and group shows at Tate Britain, London, and Centre Pompidou, Paris. His work is held in collections including the Tate Collection, Saatchi Collection, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne and London.
Tyne and Wear Archives is the record office for the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Tyne and Wear Archives preserve documents relating to the area from the 12th to the 21st century. It is based in the former headquarters of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, which it shares with Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) is a regional group of United Kingdom national museums and the county archives service located across the Tyne and Wear area of north-east England. They have been administered by a joint board of local authorities since the abolition of the Tyne and Wear Metropolitan County Council in 1986.
The Shipley Art Gallery is an art gallery in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England, located at the south end of Prince Consort Road. It has a Designated Collection of national importance.
Niels Moeller Lund was a Danish artist. He grew up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and studied at the Académie Julian in Paris. He is known for his impressionistic paintings of England, particularly London and the North-East. His most well known painting - The Heart Of The Empire - hangs in the Guildhall Art Gallery. It provided inspiration for Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith's painting of the same name, which also depicted Threadneedle Street.
Julia Vogl is an artist originally from Washington, D.C. who lives and works in London, England. She is a social sculptor, and primarily makes public art. Through a process of community engagement, her works build bright color into existing architectural landmarks, revealing local cultural values.
Museums at Night was a twice-yearly festival of late openings, sleepovers and special events taking place in museums, galleries, libraries, archive and heritage sites in the United Kingdom. It was affiliated with the European Night of Museums programme, and took place on weekends in late May and late October. It ceased operations in January 2020, through lack of funding.
The Port of Tyne comprises the commercial docks on and around the River Tyne in Tyne and Wear in the northeast of England.
John George Sowerby (1849–1914) was an English painter and illustrator from Gateshead, and director of Ellison Glass Works, the Sowerby family business, which during the 1880s was the largest producer of pressed glass in the world. The grandson of naturalist James Sowerby, his paintings were exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts, and his children's book illustrations were generally well received.
Patricia Anne "Tish" Murtha was a British social documentary photographer best known for documenting marginalised communities, social realism and working class life in Newcastle upon Tyne and the North East of England.
...her project will create a large-scale 'participatory' installation, inviting Late Shows visitors to use donated vessels to reflect the migration story of Tyneside, which is to be the subject of a permanent gallery opening later in the year.