Viaduct to echo to Exhibition’s music delights
BANDSTAND ADDED TO TYNESIDE’S BIG SUMMER IN CULTURAL SPOTLIGHT
A ‘FORGOTTEN’ corner of Newcastle will be transformed to host a range of cultural delights during this summer’s Great Exhibition of the North.
Designs have been unveiled for a modern bandstand to be erected underneath the Ouseburn Viaduct for the 80-day festival.
Visitors to the city will be encouraged to seek out the structure, designed by architecture students from Northumbria and Newcastle Universities, by venturing out of the city centre to experience the charms of the Ouseburn Valley.
Plans sent to Newcastle City Council by the Ouseburn Trust say that the bandstand site is currently underused and overgrown, but has great potential given its proximity to the valley’s businesses and attractions.
The trust said: “The concept of the bandstand grew from a desire to provide a platform for artists and creative businesses, storytellers and exhibitors to engage with the audiences of the Great Exhibition of the North, promote their craft and engage visitors in an immersive and innovative space.
“Much of the main programme criteria around freely accessible activity for long days and full weeks is prohibitive for small organisations and artists without the resource to deliver on such scale, yet the bandstand concept can accommodate individual activity as part of a wider programme for a duration that suits each of the participants.
“It also has the capacity to invite participants and audiences to experience the dramatic underused topography and architectural drama of the bridges from within a unique urban green space, increasing their usage and making them feel safer as spaces.”
The site for the bandstand sits on top of the historic culvert that runs from the Ouseburn Valley to Jesmond, and the trust says that up to 100 volunteers will be working throughout the summer to look after the green space. The project began as a design competition involving the Northumbria Architecture Society and Newcastle University Architecture Society, and the winning designers have been working alongside Ouseburn-based design studio and workshop RASKL and local architects XSITE and FaulknerBrowns to deliver the bandstand.
The structure is a modern interpretation of the Victorian bandstand with shell-like canopies creating three distinct spaces.
The cultural festival, which opens on June 22, is expected to reach an audience of three million people and to bring in up to £56m to the area’s economy.