Great Exhibition of the North

Stuart Forster heads to Newcastle Quayside and reports on the opening of the Great Exhibition of the North.

The Great Exhibition of the North 2018 started with a spectacular opening event by the River Tyne, between Newcastle and Gateshead, in north-east England. The festival was billed as a celebration of northern arts, design and innovation. It ran for 80 days, until 9 September 2018.

I attended the opening event with my camera and was most impressed by the cleverly choreographed drone performance that lit up the night sky.

Squeezing up against the barriers on Newcastle’s Quayside maximised my opportunities to record the opening ceremony without crowd figures in the frame.

I didn’t want people to get in the way of my photos of that firework display concluding the evening programme. Consequently I arrived as early as possible to secure an optimal spot.

I ended up next to the BBC camera crew. It’s rumoured that more than 20,000 people gathered along the Quayside to view the event.

Earlier in the day I’d been chatting to several of the people who played a role in organising the event. Look out for material from those interviews over the weeks ahead. I also spoke to people involved in creating installations plus curators of the exhibitions that feature as part of the Great Exhibition of the North.

Great Exhibition of the North

The evening event was an opportunity to leave my notebook and Dictaphone in my pocket and view proceedings with a camera in my hand.

The density of the crowd meant that I simply couldn’t move around freely enough to get photos of the street entertainers. They included a giant chicken that was pecking around on the Quayside like some steroid-pumped sporting mascot.

Nor was I able to get close to the group of grannies riding their turbo-powered, outsized shopping bags. I could, though, see all the performers on the giant screen that was set up by the bank of the River Tyne. That enabled me to hear poet Lemn Sissay recite his Anthem of the North.

A group of colourfully clad musicians, like some contemporary version of The Beatles on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, played a series of upbeat tunes before a cannon fired confetti into the air and fireworks fizzed from the winking Gateshead Millennium Bridge. (That’s right, a winking bridge. The pedestrian bridge tips laterally to allow boats to pass below. That movement is known as winking.)

Maximo Park playing on the Tyne

The rock group Maximo Park, who are from Newcastle, played a handful of their hits from a stage aboard the Sir Bobby Robson. The boat paused beneath the Sage Gateshead. The riverside performing arts venue, designed by Foster and Partners, is one of three hubs from which experience trails, designed for the Great Exhibition of the North, begin. The other two are the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Great North Museum: Hancock.

As the Sir Bobby Robson pulled away illuminated water jets shot into the air from the 80-metre platform installed in the River Tyne for the Get North Water Sculpture.

Drone and firework displays

I murmured a quiet wow while photographing the illuminated drones that hovered above the Sage Gateshead, deftly switching position to depict a star, the double helix of DNA, the word ‘GREAT’ and the Great Exhibition of the North logo.

The fireworks display that concluded the evening also impressed and was fun to photograph.

I’m looking forward to visiting exhibitions and attending during the 2018’s Great Exhibition of the North.

Further information

Find out more about the event on the Great Exhibition of the North website.

The Newcastle Gateshead website has information about where to go, what to see and what to do in and around Tyneside. If you are visiting Newcastle and Gateshead take a look at my Things to do during a walk in Newcastle post.

Stuart Forster is based in the north-east of England. He is an award-winning travel journalist and available for commissions about Newcastle and other destinations in the region.

See the Visit Britain website for ideas about things to do and see elsewhere in northern England.

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