Old Low Light’s second Sunday opening of 2023 was a solid success for The Heritage Centre.
Volunteers organised live music, a table top sale and a plant sale in order to attract visitors on a day the centre is not normally open, while other volunteers came in extra days in order to fulfil operational roles in the café, welcome desk and shop.
The result was over £1300 raised for The Old Low Light, over £1,000 more than an average day in June 2023.
The heritage centre used to be open 7 days per week before the pandemic. But in 2023 the centre is open 5 days per week Tuesday to Saturday. Supplementing this the centre also opens strategically on Sundays
Centre Director Guy Moody said:
“If you added all of the income we made on Sunday’s together in 2019, it would come to around £9,000. But it cost us £13,000 to do that because we never had many volunteers who could give their time on a Sunday and so we had to pay staff to come in. The result was in 2019 being open on 50 Sunday’s lost us £4,000.
At that point the charity was operating at a surplus overall and was able to subsidize loss making days. In 2023 we can’t afford to do that. Instead, we’re operating in a smart way picking special days to open therefore maximising our income as a result.
The outcome of this is the 2 Sundays we have opened in 2023 have made us more of a profit, and therefore been more beneficial to the charity than the 50 we opened in 2019.”
Across the rest of 2023 you may notice us doing other things differently to the way we’ve done things before. For example last week we hosted our first talk event on an afternoon during the week (normally our talks are 11am on a Saturday), and were delighted by the midweek afternoon turn out. Similarly we have plans to expand the events we do with our new ‘Discover’ events, interactive experiences lead by volunteers to let members of the public explore different aspects of local heritage.
In additions to our events, we have two new exhibitions coming this year.
A Stich In North Shields Time – a textile exhibition by Northern Threads on 25th of July will be on display inside of the heritage centre over the summer, complimented by artwork created by young adults with additional needs outside of the building.
This will be followed by a yet to be titled exhibition exploring Tyneside’s strong heritage linked to the Merchant Navy towards the end of the year.
We can not do any of this without the tireless efforts of our amazing volunteers and friends to the centre. So thank you again to everyone who made yesterday a success, however they contributed in a small or large way.
Keep your eyes on our What’s On Page, Social Media Profiles and Newsletter to see more coming soon.
