NOVUM Newcastle 2024
Newcastle Civic Centre and Great North Museum: The Hancock
August 2024
Newcastle’s new cultural festival brought the toon together for a four-day creative party
100 shows | 232 ARTISTS | 19,000+ AUDIENCE | 4 DAYS OF EVENTS
ART - MUSIC - WORKSHOPS - EXHIBITIONS - PERFORMANCES
NOVUM 2024 cemented Newcastle as a centre for high-end arts that are accessible to all. 2024 saw the first full festival delivery following a successful pilot in 2023.
Increased from three days to four and with an expanded footprint, adding Newcastle Civic Centre’s Quadrangle and Great North Museum: Hancock alongside the Civic Centre’s Chamber, Banquet Hall and Gardens, NOVUM showed the City as open, accepting and a place where creative ideas flourish. It demonstrated commitment to developing local talent and upskilling.
FESTIVAL PROGRAMME
2024 saw NOVUM expanded significantly, building on the foundation laid in the previous year. The programme was more ambitious, featuring 100 shows over four days compared to a smaller scale in 2023.
There were three key “attractor” events this year (compared to one in 2023): SHRINK 01995, Secret City: Newcastle, and Do Your Thing from Cirque Bijou with additional programme highlights that included Motionhouse - WILD and Triple Threat - Breaking Battle.
Programme development in 2024 emphasised the inclusion of new workshops and performance elements, engaging a broader array of participants, including emerging artists and young people, enhancing the festival’s community-oriented and capacity building aspects.
Festival Attractors and Programme Highlights
The attractor events at NOVUM 2024 spanned from photography workshops and exhibitions, to aerial and musical performances, to live installations
Secret City: Newcastle saw photographer Andrew Brooks explore sites and rarely-seen Newcastle locations to capture images that were displayed in an exhibition in the Civic Centre Gardens and at the front of The Great North Museum: Hancock. The images were accompanied by original written pieces created by Jasmine Plumpton, who researched the history of each location and captured the stories and voices of people connected to it.
Andrew also led 3 photography workshops in the run-up to and during the festival, guiding participants to use photography to experience Newcastle in a new way, exploring memory and identity as well as some secret Newcastle locations.
Secret City: Newcastle exhibition by Andrew Brooks
Cirque Bijou’s Do Your Thing merged live music, dance and acrobatics. The awe-inspiring performances centred around a grand piano hung high in the air, and included sing-along from the crowd while an aerial artist emerged from the flying piano. Cirque Bijou collaborated with local choirs, incorporating the unique voices of Newcastle into their performances.
SHRINK 01995 from Lawrence Malstaff was a must-see with local people featured in the work, striking a pose as they were enveloped and “vacuum-packed” between two large, transparent plastic sheets at the Great North Museum: Hancock.
Participants described their time in the work as like being held in a comforting hug or as an unusual opportunity to disconnect from the world.
Do Your Thing by Cirque Bijou
SHRINK 01995 by Lawrence Malstaf
The festival programme also explored new performative aspects this year, with WILD by Motionhouse being a crowd’s favourite. The dance-circus production explored humanity’s growing disconnect with the natural world and our impact on the environment, with performers moving animal-like through a forest of tall poles and wowing audiences with a gravity-defying, powerful and incredibly physical performance.
WILD by Motionhouse
On Sunday, Triple Threat - Breaking Battle premiered as part of NOVUM 2024, gathering the local and international breaking scene to battle for the 1v1 and 3v3 categories in a celebration of Hip-Hop culture, community and dance, and created a positive and supportive space for the artists to shine. The original Breaking (Breakdance) competition was created by Rob Anderson (Justice) and Paul Martin (P) from Bad Taste Cru.
Triple Threat - Breaking Battle
Music for the people
A free and paid for Music programme returned, with more performances and a focus on diversity and North-East talent. We were pleased to be able to invite Amelia Coburn to join our evening programme in the Banqueting Hall this year, following a fantastic performance in the Council Chamber in 2023 and her debut album released last spring.
Amelia Coburn
The Chamber saw performances from emerging artists, the majority of whom are from the North East - the likes of self-proclaimed “Nigeordian” Georgia May, a Neo-Soul vocalist born and raised in Newcastle upon Tyne with Nigerian roots; and Jamilah, a soulful singer songwriter from Newcastle whose heartfelt performances have earned her accolades and support from BBC Radio and Capital Xtra.
The Chambers also hosted spoken word performances from poet Lizzy Lovejoy with her celebration of being northern and Brown Girls Write - a regular writing group for all women of colour in Newcastle, back by popular demand for their second year at NOVUM.
The Banqueting Hall - a stunning location with its crafted chandeliers and modernist architecture - saw 3 nights of fantastic live music acts including Hector Gannet, Kima Otung and Flamingods - with a special treat on the Saturday night from DJ Yoda who presented a new, bespoke and immersive live AV show dedicated to Newcastle and the city's cultural landscape.
Music for the People is supported using public funding by Arts Council England Supporting Grassroots Music Programme, with additional funding provided by Curated Place.
Stay and Play
The family-oriented strand of NOVUM, Stay & Play, returned as well - refreshed and expanded with more performative elements, in particular Ripu: Enemies of the mind, a captivating story-scape drawing inspiration from Hindu mythology, performed by dancer Payal Ramchandani, storyteller Elena Joy Miller and percussionist Brendan Murphy.
Returning from 2023, Northern Print celebrated the magnificent seahorses that adorn the top of the Civic Centre by inviting audiences to print and decorate their own, while The League of Curiosity took families on an enchanting, narrative-led adventure of storytelling and non-verbal puppetry and All Ways Good engaged children and adults alike trying their hand at an exciting range of aerial equipment.
Families could also take part in new workshops this year - screen printing with Huge Dollops of Joy, dragon-themed activities with The Unfolding Theatre or learn to play the Clave, a traditional Afro-Latin American music instrument, with Juan Loaiza.
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
While 2023 saw an estimated attendance of 12,000 over the weekend, audience engagement in 2024 was markedly higher, attracting over 19,000 attendees. This significant increase can be attributed to the expanded programme and the inclusion of high-profile performances, community activation and increased outreach efforts that drew in larger crowds.
MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION
A robust PR and marketing strategy contributed to the festival's success, with a significant PR reach of 48 million and a substantial increase in ticket sales (270% up from 2023). The extensive use of both print and digital advertising, including targeted campaigns that reached 1.5 million visitors, indicates a well-executed strategy that successfully raised the festival's profile.
NOVUM attracted local, regional and national attention - with SHRINK 01995 being featured as Picture of the Day on both The Times and The Guardian on Friday 9th August.
“From shrink-wrapped people to expanding horizons, multi-arts festival Novum will be hard to ignore when it gets underway this Thursday.”
“NOVUM - Newcastle’s multi-arts festival experience - was one of the real cultural highlights of 2023, but this year’s NOVUM takes everything that was good about last year’s event and dials things up a notch.”
COMMUNITY
NOVUM engaged 75 community groups and 8 volunteering umbrella organisations, fostering community involvement and ownership of the festival. We worked with 232 local artists, and 189 freelancers.
We welcomed over 19,000 visitors from across the North-East, and engaged 1641 people with workshops or training, including two site-specific industry talks.
70 volunteer positions were created over the festival live delivery, with some volunteers returning from the pilot year. The volunteer team ranged in age from early 20 to 85 years old, from a variety of backgrounds -Global Majority, European, British.
A new Junior Producer role based in the City joined the team and there were multiple opportunities for young people, participants and emerging artists to engage with respected and established artists.
NOVUM is commissioned by Newcastle City Council and the North East Combined Authority, and developed through a collaborative partnership between UK Government, Arts Council England, Nexus, Newcastle University, Northumbria University, Great North Museum: Hancock, Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums, Percy Hedley Foundation, The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, Generator and SEND.
