Building34 rocks to Habit warehouse party

b34-habit

Newcastle's only warehouse venue - Building34, Hoults Yard

On Friday Oct30th, we held a bit of an experiment at the yard. We hosted a club night with local promoter heroes Habit.

The night was a sell-out with 500 clubbers rocking Building34 with the help of superstar DJs Lee Burridge from London and Prins Thomas from Oslo from 10pm to 4am.

Building34 is now kitted out with proven soundproofing, bar and electrics to run music events, live shows and other entertainment. Anyone for comedy? While many will want to use the Q2 bus or hop from Byker metro.

We are ready to rock…

 

What’s this? Non-descript shed or gateway to imagination

 

Building34 is prepared for packing

Building34 is prepared for packing

 Something is happening in Building34 at Hoults Yard. But, the exciting ‘wow’ is that you can’t really tell.

Inside the yard, tucked in a non-descript corner off the piazza stands the former truck garage. Inside is a tardis – awaiting your time travel.

The space is soundproofed and ready for a range of different folk: as a 3,000 sq ft TV/photo studio with 1,000 sq ft adjacent hair/make-up, as an event space for launches, corporate parties or gigs. We’ve sorting out electrics to hold a socking lighting rig. We’re racking out for a bar – so edgy that RedBull want to sponsor it. But we’re leaving a rough-and-ready industrial feel to the place. You can rig off the beams or rack things out with a heap of Hoults space dividers.

As ever, we continue with tight security, full CCTV coverage – but 350 car park spaces, 24hour access and negotiable price tag depending on how interesting you can be to push the space. And, we’re only 5 mins from Newcastle City centre and the Central Station.

On-site events team SailorGirl is hauling up some interesting venue dressing, on-site lighting and set designers R&B Group has rigged options for sets and staging, we’re testing the levels for sounds to rock the house (but not the neighbours!) with our very own Reed Ingram.

There is a 600 person capacity standing. And, we have successfully applied for a 4am dance licence on Oct30 for a fast selling-out warehouse party event (temporary capacity 500). You didn’t see this sneak viral video for Club Habit: Click here….. 

Look out for a Christmas barn dance theme complete with hog roast and a ceilidh band – sign up now if you fancy a festive celebration with a keen price and an edgy difference.

Soon to arrive at Hoults

Watch this space, we anticipate that we’ll be signing a gym shortly.

These guys will offer individual personal training as well as a range of classes.

48hrs in the life: Hoults Yard

Auction of insolvency stock: JCBs, pickups, garage doors, boxes of electricals, rails of coats

Workplace Gallery artist builds a wall to take to Zoo Art Fair

Dodgy Clutch Theatre Company requests 40ft high warehouse to test their latest CaptainCook-modified-2CV props

Coastal Productions sizes up spaces to build sets for their Spanish joint venture feature film ‘Ways to Live Forever’

Alaric Hammond takes up Artist-in-Residence pop-up space in The Kiln

J-Runnin continues to sell 300 pairs of trainers online every month. Bruce Reid Framing

Things take shape in Building34

NFM has £80,000 of Film Council funds to invest in 6 new talents

North East writers, directors and producers are being given the opportunity to show their flare and creativity through an annual short film scheme, Stingers.
 
£80,000 will be invested in 6 short films through this year’s Stingers Digital Short Film Scheme. Open to writers, directors and producers, Stingers has been run by Northern Film & Media in partnership with UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund for 8 years.
 
In the last 8 years, Northern Film & Media has invested over £500,000 in 74 short films through the Stingers Scheme. Past participants have gone on to win international awards at Venice and Berlin whilst work has premiered at the Edinburgh and London International Film Festivals.  Previous films have also attracted and secured the acting skills of top level talent, including Ruth Jones (Gavin & Stacey, Little Dorrit, Little Britain), Donald Sumpter (Constant Gardiner, Our Friends in the North, K-19 Widowmaker) and Michael Hodgson (Wonderland, Spooks, 2,000 Acres of Sky).
 
Victoria Johnson, Training and Development manager at Northern Film & Media, says: “Stingers can be a real launch pad for North East writing, directing and producing talent. It has a great track record of producing wonderful short films; films that have gone on to be a success in their own right. Stingers provides Northern Film & Media with the opportunity to discover and develop new film talent, building skills and experience. We encourage innovation and support the production of creative work of real quality. The North East has a lot to offer and Northern Film & Media wants to give people the best chance of success in this competitive industry.”
 
Bahrat Nalluri, Director of Miss Pettigrew lives for a Day and producer of shows such as Spooks and Hustle, is patron of Stingers. Bahrat says: “A scheme such as Stingers allows new talent to breathe, to have a go. Short films are a challenge, a very different kind of challenge from feature films or TV, but a challenge that is worth embracing.
 
Those interested in applying to the Stingers Digital Short Film Scheme should visit www.northernmedia.org from Monday 28 September 2009.
Stingers Digital Short Film Scheme is broken into two strands this year – Mini-Stingers and Maxi-Stingers. Mini Stingers is open to new writing and directing talent. 3 short films will be made through the mini-stingers strand for a budget of £7,500 per film. Maxi Stingers is open to writers and directors with more experience. 3 short films will be made through the Maxi-Stingers strand with a budget of £12,500 per film. 
 
12 films made through Stinger 7 during 2008/2009 will be screened at a special event in November 2009.

Buzzy days at Hoults Yard

September has brought a couple of fascinating events to the yard – Tyne Twestival and the EnterpriseNation roadshow.

IMG_0216

Monday 14 Sept’s Tyne Twestival attracted over 100 guests to the yard’s Boilerhouse space – to participate in JamJar Collective’s guerilla tech, a Guitar Hero competition and some avid networking amongst the NorthEast’s twitterati. Check out Twitter #tynetwestival

Teams like UrbanDigger.com (see below) came along to the Twestival. They were joined by HoultsYard folk like MereMortals, The Point Design, Naked Design, SailorGirl and and…

TyneTees Twestival - Sept 2009 by TyneTees Twestival.

Tues 15 Sept saw Emma Jones bring her home business roadshow to Tyneside, attracting a crowd of some 60 home business entrepreneurs. She’s on a mission with EnterpriseNation to raise the profile of home businesses in the UK by travelling around and videoing them. In Northumberland, she interviewed Stuart Mills of Useyourlocal.com 

It was great to see organisations like Newcastle Business Mums with a presence.

After the Enterprise Nation event, I skipped off to the Entrpreneurs Forum at Malmaison where they were hosting a dinner for Emerging Talent. Hoults will host one of these at the Clocktower Cafe on November 10th. See me here.

Street art of high international standard – outta Ncl

Yesterday in Geordieland, aside from a fascinating Thursday Fizz networking event, saw the private view of Mode2’s show at Lazarides, the international art dealer. Lazarides is at the forefront of the market in street art, representing Banksy, Conor Harrington, Jonathan Yeo, Paul Insect.

 

Mode2: this is the least rude pic in the place. The rest - uk.

Mode2: this is the least rude pic in the place. The rest - uk.

 

 

I have to think that Street Art is making some of the most accessible and engaging modern art – populist, but also intensely engaging and philosophical.

Steve Laz runs the gallery with vision and dedication – and a nice twinkle in his eye. He is headquartered in LondonW1, but keeps an outpost in Newcastle with the best view: the Sage Gateshead’s bubble-soundwave building completely fills the front shop window view.

Mode2’s art is certainly an eye-full but I was particularly taken by JR’s art project in a Favella of Brazil. Not quite Byker Wall… but I’m hoping we might have something to chew on in the future!

Pete Manning of Reluctant Hero – another Geordie visionary creative – was also there, talking me through his own street art collective Prefab77.

And, I’ve been having great fun with one of my new best friends Alaric Hammond – who tells me he has his first solo show in London in a month or so. I can officially reveal for the first time on the web that Alaric has bought a fab new landrover, because he’s storing it in The Railhead (qv.) until he sorts out his insurance.

How, bonny lads, best get ye spree cans oot for streetin the yord!

Yard artworks on show in Mayfair, London, this August

Paul Kenny is a stunningly interesting artist operating out of North Northumberland. His latest exhibition takes place in London at Chris Beetles gallery. Check it here. or here for a full pic list.

7UP NO2 - MAYO, 2007RUST NEVER SLEEPS, BELDERG - JETSAM AND INCOMING TIDE NO 3, 2009BLUE MOON OVER CHESWICK, 2008

The works were printed by one of the world’s foremost digital art printers, Jack Lowe, who’s studio is based at Hoults Yard. Jack is one of only six people in the world to work directly with Hewlett-Packard’s research and development department on improvements to their large format printer’s archival quality printing. (In plain English, this means that Jack can print you a big picture and it’ll last for 250 years). 

It’s great to have worldbeaters coming out of Byker!

Underground music – a new chapter at the yard?

One of the themes I’ve been exploring recently with regard to Hoults is ‘what happens “beyond office space”?’

One answer is that there are already some 10 bands that use the yard to rehearse. But we don’t have a performance space.

If you consider elsewhere… UK or worldwide… the creative hubs offer performance space – whether art, music, combined, freeform.

Warp Records are celebrating their 20th birthday by returning to their birthplace of Sheffield. Check that web page out here. For property watchers, it’s interesting that they are being hosted by Urban Splash at their Park Hill Flats development!

And, on the day that Newcastle launches its very own TEDx – a session for live lectures… it’s also nice to see spin-out action from New York’s MOMA with a Long Island outreach venue that looks super-cool: PS1. Check it’s summer music line-up here… (Also an art-architectural stunner!)

Who knows where we might take things at the Yard? There is a significant amount of understandable compliance required for fire regs, loos, alcohol licensing… but these things aren’t, I hope, insurmountable. 

Certainly, I met the band DirtyBirthday last night at the yard rehearsing in Rob Colling’s studio space. 

Do drop me a line if you feel you have some input…

Newcastle creative squeeze, while Manchester spends

White Elephant by kurki15

The BBC move to Salford MediaCity has received a fair amount of coverage – powers in London hail the move as a structural change in the TV market to reduce dependence on the capital and to pump up ‘the regions’. However, cities like Newcastle are seeing the blood sucked out of their creative economies because of the focus on Manchester… which, to add to the challenge, is much trickier to reach by train than London.

The latest report says that the BBC may go £91million over budget on the move. Just think what we could do in Newcastle with a spare £9million, let alone £91million! I can give you a shopping list for Hoults Yard’s media cluster… TV studios, post-grad training centre, superfast broadband, warehouse flats, funky bars, live music venues, more fab offices… and, being a commercial player, we’d happily invest the bulk of the money against the business plan (with appropriate incentives from the heritage lottery fund or whoever!?).

But, just to clarify, the £95million is the current estimate of the overspend. The budget is £350m, including enlightened projects like moving BBC Sport to Manchester in 2011, only a year before the Olympics in London 2012. And, the article below reckons ‘The BBC …has committed to paying 95 per cent of the value of the London homes of staff choosing to relocate from the capital.’

I picked up the latest story from Crain’s Manchester Business news:

9:45 am, July 20, 2009 
Media City move could cost BBC an extra £91m
By Simon Binns

The BBC’s decision to move five departments to Media City on Salford Quays could be £91m more expensive than keeping them in London, according to a report in today’s Daily Telegraph.

A 2006 report called BBC North – the value for money case, obtained though the Freedom of Information Act, said the £350m move to Salford could be anything from £75m more expensive to £15m cheaper. 

But those figures include £16m of state funding from the government and Salford City Council, conditional on the move going ahead.

Taking away that subsidy, the move to Salford could be “anywhere from £1m to £91m more expensive than staying in London,” according to the report.

The BBC is also likely to obtain a lower price for its Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush due to the declining property market, and has committed to paying 95 per cent of the value of the London homes of staff choosing to relocate from the capital.

A second report obtained by the paper, drawn up for the BBC by relocation firm Governetz, said the fall in property values could land the BBC with an £8m bill for the home purchase scheme.

“In all the circumstances it seems clear that the BBC is at high risk through…weakness of project management control and wholly inadequate staff resourcing,” the report concluded.

Governetz, whose report was compiled last year, said the corporation could be “mired in an employee relations disaster” by September 2009. However, with large numbers of staff voting to make the move to Salford, these fears seem unlikely to be realised.

A BBC spokesman said: “We have never presented Salford as a money-saving project. That said we are working as hard as we can to ensure that the project is delivering the highest possible value for money. In the long term – indeed, over 20 years – we expect savings on London operating costs.”

In December 2006, BBC director-general Mark Thompson, told the corporation’s governors that the move north would be “very cost effective”.

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Charlie Hoult’s Twitter status

  • Finishing touches to my Castaway event in Wed21Oct. A meetup at the offices of SteakDigital with http://www.wearefutureheads.co.uk - u r welcome 2 weeks ago
  • At TEDxNcl with Andy Budd of Clearleft user experience designer. 'It's an experience arms race' 1 month ago
  • RT @entforum Calling all young entrepreneurs Compare & Share event 7th Oct Hoults Yard, about tacking challenges and inspiring opportunities 1 month ago
  • Just got to Boilerhouse at Hoults after day with games developers and street artists to turn the yard into a cultural hub #tynetwestival 1 month ago
  • @ElegantIntros for Twestival event on this Monday. What do you need to know? 1 month ago

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