About Us

The beginning of the Art Centre’s story actually begins in Whitley Bay with a project called Spectro Arts Workshop which received its first funding from the Experimental Arts Panel of the ACGB in 1970. Spectro later transferred to Newcastle and opened just off Pilgrim Street in 1977 where it was promoted as an ‘Arts Resource Centre for the community.’ Newcastle Arts Centre was founded in 1981 to continue Spectro’s development but with some independence from the support of revenue grant aid.

In ’81, the group of buildings that now form Newcastle Arts Centre was an abandoned wreck. Originally acquired for a new hotel development in the late 1960s, it was stalled by the property crash of 1974, and the move to the City Centre north as a the Council’s focus for redevelopment.

The Arts Centre’s original business plan envisioned a mixed-use development that restored the historic and social fabric of an abandoned group of 8 buildings in Newcastle’s city centre. Commercial and Residential lettings were created to fund a mortgage on the site, and the Company also developed its own Arts-related trading departments. 

While 56 listed buildings were demolished to make way for Eldon Square Shopping Centre, the area around Central Station declined. Later, the new Tyne and Wear Conservation Team realised that Westgate Road contained a number of forgotten 18th Century Merchants Houses and listed the buildings that we now own. Our task was to create a working Arts Centre while restoring this heritage. We established the identity and role of each of the buildings, bringing them back to life, and the goodwill of local people familiar with the buildings.

Despite neglect and rot we recycled the buildings and discovered much about the importance of these buildings as central to the government and development of Tyneside during the 17th and 18th Centuries. This includes a previously unknown Roman Milecastle under our Courtyard, and protected the City’s first Assembly House, which is the oldest surviving Arts building on Tyneside. Both these locations are now marked with ‘blue plaques’. 

By the time the building was opened in 1988 by the Prince of Wales, we had salvaged thousands of old bricks from demolition sites, timber from a grain silo that stood beside the Baltic, and fittings from other sites. We had manufactured traditional doors, windows, ceramic floor tiles, mosaic and timber details to build a high-quality finish that respected the vernacular while meeting contemporary needs. All achieved by our careful management of a Government Job Creation and Training project.

During the 1990s the Arts Centre provided a home for the largest concentration of professional arts activity in the region. This included many of Northern Arts ‘key strategic organisations’, Projects UK (a renamed Spectro Arts Workshop), the offices of Northern Stage, New Writing North and Folkworks.  Meanwhile, we were making and promoting creative craft, developing exhibition and performances for our own programmes. This included The Northern Professional Craft Fair, and a 7-day Edinburgh Fringe Festival “Stopover”, acting as a preview venue of performers on their way to Edinburgh.

But in 1993, The Arts Centre suffered a crisis as Northern Arts’ strategy was directed away from local projects to make use of the new National Lottery funds, which aimed to build the visual arts and music centres of national significance that became The Baltic and Sage Gateshead (now The Glasshouse) venues.

This ambition to centrally direct this region’s arts development saw funding pulled from the Side Gallery, Charlotte Press and Projects UK. Meanwhile positive spin offs from the Arts Centre were the Zone Gallery, Northern Print and Locus Plus.

Simultaneously we were unable to raise funds from either the City or Northern Arts, and for the next six years we concentrated on trading to survive and improve our financial position, and since this time Newcastle Arts Centre has not applied for revenue-funding. Instead, we have largely funded our development, programme, and maintenance from self-generated revenue. This focus allowed us to refurbish the Arts Centre in 2000, funded from our own income.

The new millennium saw us able to reopen after our refurbishments with active studios for local artists and creatives, a gallery ready for touring exhibitions, and our own performance space, The Black Swan Bar & Venue.

From 2001- 2012 we were an exhibition producer and participant in three important Northern RIBA projects, presenting ideas of the past and future urban environments in Newcastle and Tyneside. In 2013 we began a very popular series of art courses for adults, which still has both new and returning participants today, as well as engaging tutors who are experts in their crafts. 

In addition, in these years the facilities at the Arts Centre were regularly used by more than 80 groups and organisations, all this activity resulted in a very positive growth of visitor numbers. Meanwhile we have supported live music by funding performances and providing a free venue for Jazz North East, plus touring performances of the UK’s Jazz artists. We also contributed to the funding of the Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music, gave a loan to Breeze Creatives and free exhibition space to dozens of visual artists.

By 2020 we were looking forward to a strong and active future with a growing audience and a very positive financial position. February 2020 saw a 27% increase in turnover against the same month a year earlier.

The lockdown for Covid-19 in March of that year was a huge setback for the City of Newcastle, and a complete closedown of the Arts Centre. Although we were trading again by June that year, arts activity was limited to providing studios and running a very restricted programme of art courses. The lockdown allowed us to continue planning the improvement of our site within our existing ambition to make our operation environmentally sustainable.

But now, in 2026 we have slowly yet steadily become fully active again with new partnerships and long term projects started.

We enjoy our work with Creative Central NCL which started with ‘Brass Tacks’, a professional mentoring project for new graduates. Our collaboration has progressed into Street Art projects to revitalise the historic but run down routes of Forth Lane and Pink Lane that border the Arts Centre.

Creative Central have also funded a feasibility study to progress our plans for the Assembly House. This historic location at No. 55 Westgate Road has continued to prove its value as Newcastle’s oldest surviving arts building, having been used as a high street exhibition venue, event space for graduate shows and educational projects, and as a film location for a range of production companies. 

Creative Central NCL is a major Newcastle City Council initiative, backed by the North East Combined Authority, to transform central Newcastle into a thriving hub for independent artists, creatives, and cultural organizations.