Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Everyone!
The year has certainly been one to remember.
We have been very pleased to be part of the North Shields 800 celebrations, have marked the 10th anniversary of the official opening of our heritage gallery, and have delivered a very broad programme of exhibitions, events and activities.
We hope you enjoy reading this Review of the Year.
Since January 2025, we have been part of a small team providing facts of the day – for every day of the year – for the council to post on social media and on its North Shields 800 website. Partnership working has been a strong theme of the year as a whole and we began the year with a strong focus on community wellbeing and connection.
We hosted Food For Thought, a community group bringing people together through shared food and conversation, and supported Read Easy by raising funds for this local charity to help purchase new books to improve adult literacy. From January through to March, we also provided a weekly Warm Space on Fridays, offering a welcoming environment and hot drinks in support of North Tyneside Council’s Warm Space initiative. Creative activity featured strongly too, with ceramics classes led by Beth and Amy from Hutley & Welch Creations running between January and March, and the launch of Coastal Sewcial events in January, which continued throughout the year, bringing community sewers together for friendly and creative sessions using sewing machines.
February saw a varied programme of music and performance, including Marras and Mariners, an afternoon of sea shanties and poetry with Harry and Bridget and one of our popular classic music concerts organised by David and Jennifer Murray, all of which were well attended and warmly received.
In March, we marked International Women’s Day with a guided walk led by Pat Stevens and a Women at Work talk with Janis Blower, celebrating women’s contributions past and present. The month also saw an important milestone for the centre as we celebrated our 10th birthday, bringing together friends, supporters and volunteers. Musical events continued with a concert by Birkett and Fisk.
During May, our volunteers once again delivered a very successful plant sale to raise funds for the centre, followed by the much-loved annual fabulous display by the North of England Classic Car and Pre-War Automobiles Motoring Club, which attracted many visitors and remains a highlight of the spring calendar.
In June we were partners in a successful Community Day at the Linskill Centre, which focused on a celebration of the history, heritage, and culture of North Shields, attended by more than 1,500 people. This included six talks, several exhibitions and displays, live music and a community marketplace with local organisations promoting their role, all aimed at highlighting what is great about the town.
From July to October, we were honoured to host the hugely popular exhibition ‘Harvest from the Deep’, by award-winning photographer Peter Robinson, which captured the heart and soul of the North Shields fishing industry. The photographs were taken over 10 years, when Peter recorded the working and home lives of local fishermen engaged in one of the UK’s most dangerous industries. We were delighted to welcome so many working fishermen into the centre to view the exhibition, which was so popular that when it ended in October, we displayed a selection of Peter’s photographs in the café.
Also, in July we opened a major new exhibition, ‘North Shields – 800 years in the making’ – in the heritage gallery which takes visitors on a journey from the town’s humble beginnings with a small settlement of shiels (fishermen’s huts) at the mouth of the Pow Burn through wars, conflict, innovation and prosperity, through to growth and development. This was the culmination of months of research and work to bring together what we already knew about the history of our town and present a coherent story. We have been grateful for the support from friends in the community in helping to source images and check facts and also heartened by the lovely comments people have written after visiting the gallery.
Th exhibition has been very well received, and the intention is to provide a series of small displays, some produced by local people who have suggested topics to us, focusing on specific aspects of North Shields. The first sets out the story of the archaeology of Clifford’s Fort and others will follow which delve into the history of railways, Northumbrian pipes, salt panning, education, and the role of women over the centuries.
Shortly after opening ‘North Shields – 800 years in the making’, our friends, Innocent Bystanders delivered three performances of ‘Standing on the Shoulders’, with songs and words, taking audiences on the journey made by women from medieval times to the present day through plague, witch trials, wartime and riots. They very kindly donated the proceeds of all three performances to us and a quilt which featured in the events, is now hanging outside the heritage gallery.
During August we had a wonderful exhibition in our café by the Tynemouth Photographic Society including images of local scenes and events dating back to the late 1800s.
In October we hosted our first Dungeons and Dragons event. Having played the game for years, volunteer Harry believed that Dungeons and Dragons would provide opportunities to inspire imagination and for people of all ages to explore the area’s history and he was not wrong.
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At the end of October ‘Shipyard faces and intriguing spaces…a drawing and painting retrospective’, an exhibition by Peter Burns, opened on our top floor, including a selection of his work from over 50 years. Curated by Dave Young, a very good friend of the Old Low Light, this will run to the end of the year and has been very popular.
In November, we were so pleased to be part of the publicity surrounding the unveiling of the sculpture of escaped enslaved woman, Mary Ann Macham, whose journey to freedom featured in our exhibition Breaking Chains – North Shields and Slavery, in 2019. Six years ago, after hearing of Mary Ann’s brave escape and how she was welcomed to North Shields, we were determined that others should know her extraordinary story. The striking bronze sculpture on the bank top is a powerful visual tribute to her and will ensure that her story becomes very much part of North Shields’ history.
From the summer to November, we have been working closely with artist Gaynor Devaney, another good friend, who led a project involving 11 workshops at the Old Low Light, to create a textile map of North Shields. Gaynor also joined us at the Community Day in June to seek views from local people about what they would like to be included and to hear their memories of the town. Around 60 local people were involved in the creation of the stunning artwork which is on display in our café.
While all these activities have been taking place we have continued with our regular programme of educational visits, talks and guided walks, as well as our popular classic music concerts.
We have also been pleased to support I Love North Shields, through regular articles for its magazine and website, working with an amazing group of people who are working hard to promote everything that is good about our town.
And our community space on the top floor has been well used, including by a wide range of community groups and of course FLOW, a group which works with adults with additional needs and has used our centre for several years.
As already mentioned, we are grateful to North Tyneside Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund for providing grants to enable us to take part in North Shields 800 events, activities and projects and to other funders who have continued their generous support, as well as to our volunteers who have provided wonderful support through such a busy year.
None of this would have been possible without the continued dedication of our volunteers. Around 80 volunteers supported the centre on a weekly basis (with nearly 200 registered and active across the year), contributing approximately 24,960 volunteer hours across the year. Between January and December, we were delighted to welcome 41,257 visitors, reflecting the continued interest in, and support for, the Old Low Light and all that it offers to the community.
As we approach 2026, we do so with optimism and plans for another wonderful year.
