To Make The Stone Stoney

Today's xsite is Anna...

‘To make the stone stoney’ is a series of interactive discussions events, based at our events venue Ouse Street Arts Club, related to the long-term research partnership between artist Nicola Singh and our own Tim Bailey, commissioned by Wunderbar.

Curated under a collection of themes by Nicola Singh, the events aim to generate discussion that reflects upon and challenges the archive of work created through this partnership and which also looks to future collaborations.

Each event will include an introduction to the work, group discussion and a short exercise that aims to further explore the value of thinking with and through movement and sound in relation to the built environment.

Wednesday 20 November
space; place; scale; negotiation; private; public; permission; protest; ownership; governance; structure; substance; signs; symbols;

Wednesday 27 November
performer; spectator; absence; non-participation; aesthetics; ethics; discomfort; the act of seeing; the experience of being seen;

Wednesday 4 December
improvisation; instruction; spectacle; collectivity; synchronicity; thought; posture; action; gesture; rhythm; labour; move; be moved;

Wednesday 11 December
head; shoulders; knees & toes; length; depth; breadth; height;

Documentation of previous work will also be exhibited as part of the events.

Each event will take place between 6pm – 8pm on the above dates, at Ouse Street Arts Club, Ouse Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2PF. Tickets are £4 for each event or £12 for all four, price includes a limited edition print. Refreshments will be provided. Please note that the events have a very limited capacity.

Tickets available at: www.wegottickets.com/xsitearchitecture

For further information or if you have any queries please contact: info@xsitearchitecture.co.uk

Ouse Street General Store

Today's xsite is Anna...

Ouse Street General Store has been open, at Ouse Street Arts Club, since last Friday, we have had a lot of people through the doors, sold quite a bit and enjoyed being shop keepers! We are still open all day today and 9-5pm on Saturday so if you haven't been along yet try and pop in!

 

Ouse Street General Store

Today's xsite is Anna...

We will be opening our events space Ouse Street Arts Club as ‘Ouse Street General Store’ from 11th – 20th October as part of Northern Design Festival, please make sure you pop by!

The corner shop, not just a place to pick up a pint of milk and The Chronicle, but a place central to our sense of community and our collective memory. Not just purveyors of essential provisions but a place to bump into neighbours, to pick up gossip and central to our sense of living somewhere.
Overshadowed by the supermarkets and seldom the first thought on a property developer’s mind the humble corner shop’s future is far from secure.

Ouse Street Arts Club sits at the heart of Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley where an industrial past sits alongside a creative present and JCBs are preparing the ground for major residentially led regeneration with the aim of creating a sustainable urban village.

It is in this context that Ouse Street General Stores will open its doors for Northern Design Festival 2013.

Presenting curated shelves full of work from over 30 North East and national designers, artists and makers Ouse Street General Stores will be your local cultural 7-Eleven.  It’s ‘Open all hours’ meets ‘Etsy’ and you won’t go short of that pint of milk.

Opening Hours
11 – 20^th October 9am – 5pm
Preview Friday 11th 5.30-7.30pm
Closed Sundays

Ouseburn Festival - This weekend

Today's xsite is Anna...

This weekend sees the return of the Ouseburn Festival to the valley. There is loads going on all weekend, we will have our events space Ouse Street Arts Club open all day Sunday for coffee and cocktails from the Ouseburn Coffee Company, and the rest of Ouse Street will be packed with food and drink stalls from 11am - 5pm. Come along and feast on street food, bbq, pies, pickles, wines, cakes, veg, bread, cheese and loads more...

Elsewhere in the valley on the Sunday there are rides, boat trips, duck races, parades, tours, exhibitions, markets stalls, face painting and loads more...

'Snug' Pop Up Sewing Cafe

Today's xsite is Anna...

This weekend sees the next exciting event at our new venue Ouse Street Arts Club. 'Snug' Pop Up Sewing Cafe will be running all weekend serving up cake and coffee alongside sewing workshops each day. Pop along and have a look or book onto one of their classes via the details below...

facebook.com/snugsew

This Weekend...

 Today's xsite is Anna...

Fancy a cocktail down the arcade?

This weekend our new venue Ouse Street Arts Club will be transformed into a retro games arcade with a bar, cocktails from Ouseburn Coffee Company, music, food from Riley's Fish Shack, ping pong and leaderboards... Come down and have a go!

Ouse Street, Newcastle, NE1 2PF

Ouse Street Arts Club

Today's xsite is Anna...

We're the the process of curating Ouse Street Arts Club full of exciting events for 2013. Last year saw an architectural Summer School, an Art Mart, a cinema, Grazer Supperclubs and a few different exhibitions.

Building on this for the coming year, we already have plans for a temporary games arcade as part of The Late Shows, a pop-up sewing cafe, more exciting Supperclubs, exhibition launches, The Northern Design Festival and Ouseburn Open Studios...

If you are interested in using the space for an event or exhibition please get in touch. 

You can email using anna@xsitearchitecture.co.uk or ousestartsclub@gmail.com

http://ousestreetartsclub.wordpress.com/

 

 

Highlights of 2012

Today's xsite is Anna...

So we are coming to the end of another busy year here at xsite. We have seen a few projects come to completion, more start, some new faces and a whole new venue open...

There was a little bit of a coffee theme to start the year with the completion of 9Bar cafe on Grey Street, part of the Theatre Royal; and the opening of the Ouseburn Coffee Company roastery within our own Foundry Lane Studios. If you haven’t investigated either of them yet you are missing out.

It was a busy year for awards with the Toffee Factory scooping lots of prestigious prizes including The RIBA Award 2012, North East Sustainable Building and North East Project of the Year 2012, RICS Best Commercial Building and Project of the Year 2012, RTPI Regional Award Winner 2012.

The Fabrick Housing Offices came to completion in September; an office fit out for the social housing provider in Middlehaven, Middlesbrough, full of honey pots, upturned boats, beach huts and copper tea sheds. We’re very proud of how it has turned out.

Small fit out projects at The Cycle Hub on the Quayside and Poetic Gem in Hoults Yard both opened. Ouse Street Arts Club, our meanwhile project in 2 shipping containers, in the Lower Ouseburn finally opened. It provides creative event space in the valley and has so far been part of the Late Shows and Ouseburn Open Studios, as well as hosting some supperclubs, our Summer School crits, exhibitions and a cinema. We have launched the Ouseburn Social this year too so watch this space for future events throughout 2013.

On site we have more to look forward to throughout 2013, with work due to finish at Dovecot Street creative offices in January, the Palace Hub in Redcar completing in February, Green Lane student accommodation in Durham completing in July. Work continues at Rivers House office fit out and Planning has just been granted for another student accommodation scheme at Ainsley Street in Durham. Work is also starting on a planning application for a new incubator workspace in Middlesbrough.

Thanks to everyone we have collaborated with this year, here’s to more of the same for 2013...

Open Studios 2012 as it happened...

Today's xsite is Anna...

Open studios has been and gone for another year and we for one had a brilliant time. We were open at Ouse Street Arts Club for the first time, instead of Foundry Lane Studios, and received about 750 visitors over the course of the weekend. A lot when you think that the space only holds about 30 people!

The work on show in our art-mini-mart looked amazing and the pocket cinema worked brilliantly with people hanging around to watch whole films. Our little wood burner kept us warm all weekend and made sure all visitors left with a slight wood smoke aroma!

Our new venue was incredibly well received and we look forward to a full programme of events over the next year. To keep up to date with what is going on you can check out the wordpress site here. Or get in touch if you are interested in using the space via OuseStArtsClub@gmail.com

Ouseburn Open Studios 2012

Today's xsite is Anna...

We're taking part in the Ouseburn Open Studios again this year, but instead of opening Foundry Lane Studios we will be at the newly complete Ouse Street Arts Club.

Ouse Street Arts Club is our brand new creative venue occupying two converted shipping containers in the Lower Ouseburn on Ouse Street, tucked in next to the Victoria Tunnel entrance. For the ever busy Ouseburn Open Studios we are putting on an ‘Art-Mini-Mart’ with amazing stuff to see and buy from the likes of Prefab, Amy Dover, Muro Buro, Jill Tate, Laura Sheldon and Bubblegum Vegas

Come along and visit our ‘Pocket Cinema’ with an array of short films being shown all weekend... There will be music, food from The Grazer Supperclub and drinks including the finest indie coffee from Ouseburn Coffee Company for you to enjoy around our hand built woodburner keeping us all warm!

Prefab have prints for sale framed and unframed, Amy Dover has beautiful illustrations, cards and ceramics for sale and Jill Tate will be selling her photography as cards and prints. Muro Buro has amazing ‘skull’ prints in gold silver and bronze... Laura Sheldon has prints, t-shirts, cards, badge/sticker packs and ceramic decals for sale too, as well as jewellery from Bubblegum Vegas.

We'll be hanging out there all weekend, so pop down and say hi, have a look our new space, have some lunch and buy some Christmas presents...

As well as ourselves Mushroom Works, Northern Print, 36 Lime Street, The Biscuit Factory, Biscuit Tin Studios and Colbalt Studios will be open all weekend, as well as the Toffee Factory who are playing host to the British by Design pop-up shop. A free shuttle bus will be running between all of the venues as well as to the Baltic and the Sage.

To see more about Ouse Streets Arts Club click here....

and more about Ouseburn Open Studios here...

Meanwhile

Today's xsite is Adrian...

Pop-ups and pallets, restaurants in car parks  and artists on the high street, the themes of temporary adaption, retrofit and make-do-and-mend were on the rise in design before the recession but have become something of an imperative over the last 4 years. 

The disciplines of architecture and urbanism are no exception, where the retreat of development funding, plummeting values and surplus floorspace have provided a challenge to communities, property owners and designers alike.

Over the last couple of years xsite have been involved in a number of temporary and ‘meanwhile use’ projects, applying a shift in thinking to a more DIY mentality, as part of what can be seen as an 'incremental' approach to development and regeneration.


Pallet ‘Micro Offices’ were designed and constructed as a temporary means to exploit an unlet 1,800sqft floorplate at BOHO 1 in Middlesbrough. Fully occupied by individuals and micro businesses from the off, they were recently dismantled to allow a more conventional let to re-occupy the space.

The Cycle Hub, a social enterprise  set up to provide a physical focus  for cyclists and cycle culture on Tyneside has taken a temporary lease on the former Regeneration Centre building on Newcastle’s Quayside. xsite worked with the tightest of budgets to reinvent the building’s function space to house a thriving cafe, bike shop and workshop.

Ouse Street Arts Club is a self-developed and self-built space, a curated venue based in converted shipping containers in Newcastle’s Lower Ouseburn Valley. Conceived as a stop-gap use for a derelict, future development site the evolving space is a focal point for a range of events and creative activity and is an advanced bridgehead in the regeneration of the area.

In each case the ‘Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper’ thinking these projects utilise helps unlock economic, social and creative value which might otherwise sit behind a ‘to let’ sign, while also priming them for the next phase of an evolving development story.