Our Update
Fans flock to the Falcons with new ticketing partnership
Tickets are available for the next home fixture against Leeds Carnegie which is the semi-final of the RFU Championship. A full range of Adult, Concession and Under 16 tickets, for the North and South Terraces, as well as adult seating tickets for the West Stand.
Visitor Information Centre Manager, Jonathan Gilroy, says: “We are incredibly excited by this partnership with Newcastle Falcons. Not only will it provide the Falcons with a visible presence in the heart of the city, it will encourage more people to visit us and find out about all of the fantastic things NewcastleGateshead has to offer.
“ It’s a crucial promotion season for the Falcons and by helping to make tickets for the games more accessible to both visitors and local fans, we hope to inspire an even bigger audience to get behind the team. Our knowledgeable and experienced staff will be on-hand to direct both home and away fans and help them make the most of the visit.”
Falcons Ticketing Coordinator, Andrew Robson, added: “After launching in-town sales for Newcastle University students last December, we have been looking for an appropriate partner in Newcastle City Centre to offer an easy option for our supporters to purchase their match tickets and we are pleased to have found this with NewcastleGateshead Initiative and the Visitor Information Centre.
“For the remainder of this season we will be offering a selection of West Stand seats at adult prices, and we are currently working with our ticket system provider Ticketmaster so that the Visitor Information Centre will be able to offer our full range of prices and games as of next season.”
NewcastleGateshead Visitor Centre opening times are Monday –Saturday, 9.30am-5.30pm, Sundays and Bank holidays, 10am-4pm.
NewcastleGateshead scoops stand award at Confex
The team at NewcastleGateshead Convention Bureau are celebrating after beating off stiff competition to win the Best Stand accolade at International Confex last month (March).
Presenting the award in the UK Destination or Venue category for stands larger than 16m², Kate Hewitt from VenueFuinder.com commented: “I was delighted to pick NewcastleGateshead Convention Bureau as the winner of the best stand award at International Confex. The staff on the stand were amazing – friendly, welcoming and knowledgeable about the event opportunities in their area.
“What I particularly liked was that there were lots of different things going on each day; guess the secret cake ingredient, cocktails, ukulele lessons, and there was an amazing cake of The Sage Gateshead that really caught my attention.”
Following the launch of the Convention Bureau’s ‘Experiences delegates will love’ campaign in February, the team presented a mini showcase at Confex, previewing one of the UK’s best-loved annual food festivals, EAT! NewcastleGateshead, which returns in 2013 for a seventh year (24 August -08 September).
This included the EAT! NewcastleGateshead Cake City Taste Challenge, which gave visitors to International Confex the opportunity to guess the mystery local ingredient. Also part of EAT!, local and national landmarks have for the past three years been constructed out of cake; the Cake City challenge at Confex played homage to the event with an edible model of the destination’s flagship conference and event venue, The Sage Gateshead.
Other stand activity included specially created Ukulele workshops from The Sage Gateshead and the Vermont Hotel’s cocktail demonstration with a difference. Following the launch of its new bar, Livello in October, molecular mixology and a touch of magic was delivered by The Cocktail Stig.
Sarah Stewart, chief executive at destination management and marketing organisation, NewcastleGateshead Initiative said: “Our Convention Bureau has attended International Confex for more than a decade and this year we wanted to do something a little bit different by showcasing some of the many unique experiences on offer to conference delegates across NewcastleGateshead.
“Winning this award helps us to highlight the fun and welcoming personality of the people and the place and I’m delighted that Kate found the experiences on offer on our stand at Confex as entertaining and enjoyable as delegates and visitors to the destination do”
Kate added: “The team took the time to engage with visitors to the show and were a real asset over the three days. Congratulations again for a very well deserved win.”
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Looking forward to Juice
Juice - NewcastleGateshead’s award-winning festival for children and young people returns this year from Friday 25 October – Sunday 3 November. It may sound strange talking about an event in April that is not until October, we have already been working on this for some months. The programme is coming together and we’re ready to share some fantastic, and some bittersweet news…
The fantastic news: our application to Arts Council England for Grants for the Arts funding was successful, enabling us to deliver the festival with a full programme and resourcing budget in place made up of support from money from Gateshead and Newcastle Councils, Sir James Knott Trust, Catherine Cookson Foundation and Bridge North East.
And the not so good, but bittersweet news: Rachel Adam is moving on to take up an appointment as Project Director for Creative People and Places after four years as Juice Festival Director. We wish Rachel all our very best wishes in her new role. Rachel leaves us having made enormous strides in cross-city collaboration and an extremely strong and well recognised festival. The Juice Festival programme for 2013 is well on its way to being complete, and Claire Newton, Juice Producer and Projects Manager will continue to support the festival moving forward.
The Juice Festival programme is packed full of activities and events created by and for children, young people and their families with innovation, creativity and young people at the core. New programme strands for 2013 include events, masterclasses and workshops curated by a team of young people, as well as a new photography strand to the successful Press Gang project that was introduced last year.
Juice Festival is now into its sixth year as part of NewcastleGateshead Initiative’s programme of festivals and events. More information can be found on the Juice website www.juicefestival.co.uk and blog http://www.juicefestivalblog.com, and the full programme will be announced in September.
ISIS and NewcastleGateshead Initiative Artist in Residence
We are working with ISIS Arts to host an artist in residence to work on an exciting data visualisation project using data that comes through NewcastleGateshead Initiative. GH Hovagimyan was chosen as the artist in residence and joins us from New York through April using our city's everyday data, from car parking spaces to airplane/train departures to human migration and much more.
During the residency, Hovagimyan will be working on developing a ‘natural interface’ tool, which he describes as “a sequence in the movie Minority Report that has Tom Cruise grabbing digital images floating in the air and manipulating them….this is the natural interface…”
Using the ‘natural interface’, Hovagimyan will research various ways we can represent and experience NGI’s vast amounts of data and statistics. By adapting a Kinect camera, Hovagimyan will create a real time virtual experience in which the whole body can be engaged and immersed in the data, allowing the audience to physically interact with the data while viewing their virtual body in the dataspace.
G.H. Hovagimyan is an experimental artist working in a variety of forms. An Internet and new media pioneer, his works range from hypertext works to digital performance art, interactive installations and HD video.
The year’s events are starting to pick up now, with key events such as Gateshead International Jazz Festival at The Sage Gateshead, which took place at the beginning of April, welcoming thousands to enjoy an enviable jazz lineup in the halls and with free performance on the concourse.
Maker Faire makes a comeback to NewcastleGateshead on 27-28 April at Centre for Life. Featuring over 300 designer-makers there is something for everyone including a humanoid knitting robot, Music Scientists to help you experiment with circuits, synths, Theremins and soundwaves; a laser assault course; PancakeBot, a domestic appliance size LEGO robot that draws pancake words and cooks them on an electric griddle; the Mars Rover demo model and countless workshops to learn how to solder, make LED badges and even paint… using a pneumatic cannon! http://www.makerfaireuk.com/
The Late Shows also returns on 17-18 May for a weekend of after-hours culture. More venues than ever have signed up to open their doors to the public for a programme of after-dark events and exhibitions, which are all different to what is on offer to visitors during the day. The brochure is now live at http://www.thelateshows.org.uk/home.html
Don’t forget that you can keep up to date on the highlight events throughout the year using the NewcastleGateshead Cultural Planning Calendar. Visit www.NewcastleGateshead.com/cultural-planning-calendar and use the password ngbridges.
NewcastleGateshead Initiative welcomes the findings of the Adonis Review
As you’ll no doubt be aware, the North East Independent Economic Review Report has now been published.
Here at NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we welcome the review which aims to help create a better economy and society in the North East. We’re already helping to bring over £1.26 billion into the visitor economy each year and welcome anything that will help strengthen that.
It’s great to see that the report recognises the importance of tourism, heritage and culture to our economy – we know that in NewcastleGateshead we attract around 17.6 million visitors each year, bringing £1.26billion to the local economy and supporting over 18,000 jobs.
The focus on the need to bring in and keep investment and create more high skilled jobs in particular target sectors also complements the work our business winning team is doing. We have a very proactive international and national marketing strategy particularly targeting offshore and renewable energy, creative and digital, and science and healthcare sectors.
The report recommends that increasing private sector employment is key to the success of the region and appropriate jobs will come from both new investment and growing existing strengths such as tourism.
Organisations in the North East have a great track record of working together and building on experience and expertise to benefit the whole area and we look forward to contributing to help deliver future success. We will do all we can to support the work of the North East LEP to implement the findings of the review team.
We will keep you updated with our involvement as work progresses but in the meantime if you have any questions or issues you’d like to discuss further get in touch.
Land:in NewcastleGateshead
Our Inward Investment team is working on the development of a specially designed soft landing programme, aimed at helping overseas investors to quickly establish businesses in NewcastleGateshead.
Land:in NewcastleGateshead will complement the range of range of impartial services already offered by the team which includes property solutions, access to finance, assistance with recruitment and training, access to B2B networks and facilitated introductions.
We will formally launch Land:in NewcastleGateshead in the next few weeks but here’s a quick overview of what’s available:
• 12 months rent free at a range of locations
• Monthly service charge payable ranging from £0 to £99 per month.
• Support package from a range of professional service providers including legal, recruitment, banking etc.
• Investment team services designed to make it easy to scale-up quickly.
• Exclusive discounts with a range of companies
Catherine Walker, Inward Investment Director, says: “Our warm Geordie welcome is world-renowned and that’s exactly what the programme will deliver through providing access to free office space (subject to a licence agreement and monthly service charges), professional service support and a range of networking opportunities. We’re committed to making sure that businesses who locate from overseas have the right support to integrate seamlessly into the business community to give them the best possible start in realising their ambitions for growth."
The programme is supported by a range of organisations from across NewcastleGateshead including leading law firm Ward Hadaway.
Jamie Martin, managing partner at Ward Hadaway, said: "Inward investment is a vital part of the NewcastleGateshead economy so we are delighted to be able to play our part in this forward-thinking initiative.
"The great thing about the Land:in programme is that it offers real, practical help to ensure overseas investors in the region can settle in quickly and hit the ground running.
"Getting the right legal advice at the right time is crucial to the success of any business venture so we will be working hard to make sure that people coming to the region get a high-quality professional service to match the warm welcome."
If you would like to find out more about the Land:in programme, contact Catherine Walker on 0191 441 5761 or email catherine.walker@ngi.org.uk
December 2012 Update
November 2012 Update
October 2012 Update
