Review of 2024
2024 has been a good year for the Old Low Light Heritage Centre.
We have seen increased events and activities – more than 130 – and our café and gallery continue to be popular, with lovely comments made about our very popular Merchant Navy exhibition, and almost 30,000 visitors over the year. Some of the outside of the building has been decorated, we have made new partnerships, strengthened others and importantly have welcomed new volunteers to boost our team.
So, despite the ongoing challenge of navigating through a difficult financial situation, the good news is that as we approach the tenth anniversary of our official opening, we are still afloat, with exciting plans for 2025.
We do so with continued help from the National Lottery Community Fund, which last year awarded five years of grant funding. The Garfield Weston Trust and Community Foundation also provided core funding to The Old Low Light in 2024. In November, we received very welcome news from the Sir James Knott Trust, which has generously supported us in the past, that they will be providing grant funding of £10,000 for each of the next three years.
Alongside these grants, we are also managing our finances very carefully, trying to reduce our costs wherever we can and ensuring we make the most of opportunities to increase our income.
At the beginning of 2024, we increased the membership fee and took the difficult decision to charge members half price for our Saturday talks. This helps with our balance sheets and has also resulted in fewer ‘no shows’ at our talks, freeing up seats for others. Our monthly Tuesday talks continue to be free for members.
During the year we have offered a varied musical programme, introducing and trialing Saturday afternoon concerts. These attract new people from across the North East.
Our guided walks remain popular and now include the well-established coastal walk, as well as historical tours of Preston Village and Tynemouth. More new walks are planned for 2025.
Our green fingered volunteers and their friends once again shared their horticultural skills and love of gardening in two fantastic plant sales, which kept the tills ringing in the café as well as raising much needed funds for the centre.
A five-day pop-up art selling exhibition at the end of May resulted in a donation of 25% of all sales.
We have organised successful willow weaving workshops and have benefited from new arts and crafts people hiring our top floor for their own workshops. The Coastal Sewcial brings in 20 people (and their sewing machines and clothes patterns) for a day of stitching. A five-week series of ceramics workshops was so successful that the organisers have already booked for 2025.
We welcomed visitors to our ‘warm space events’ and this is continuing over the next few months. And we have been delighted to continue providing a venue for yoga and mindfulness sessions, as well as for meetings of community groups. More recently consultation events about the future of the Tyne Brand site have taken place in the centre.
Over the year hundreds of schoolchildren have visited to find out more about their local history and heritage.
Our friends at FLOW continue to use the top floor two days a week providing a safe space for craft activities by adults with additional needs. Their artwork is often on show in the drying ground.
It has been a pleasure to be part of I Love North Shields, a new monthly magazine introduced to promote local heritage, art and culture. We regularly provide feature articles for the magazine as well as information about our events and activities. This is a much-welcomed opportunity for us to reach a wider audience but also to work with others who are passionate about promoting North Shields.
For several months we have been working with North Tyneside Council and a range of partner organisations to develop a programme of activities to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the founding of North Shields during 2025.
During the year we plan to introduce new display boards in the heritage gallery telling the story of North Shields from its founding in 1225 to the present day. Our talks programme will elaborate on this theme.
We are also very pleased to be linking in with other individuals and organisations who have plans to celebrate the anniversary.
So, all in all, it has been a good year with lots to look forward to. As well as anniversary events and activities, we also plan to focus on some much needed repairs and improvements to the building, which we know will be costly.
A very big and sincere thank you to everyone for their support and we wish you all the best for a happy and healthy 2025.