Gateshead world music centre brief goes to FPP

FPP Design is to create marketing materials for The Sage Gateshead, the £70m international centre for music currently under construction at Gateshead Quays.

The centre is being billed as the mainstay of a culturally led regeneration of the area and will from winter 2004 serve as the home for chamber orchestra Northern Sinfonia and former folk and traditional music development agency Folkworks.

According to a spokeswoman for The Sage Gateshead, the work, which launches next summer, encompasses leaflets, brochures, fliers and posters, and a revamp of the organisation’s website, www.thesagegateshead.org.

The brief is to ‘convey [The Sage Gateshead] building and the opportunities and programmes that will be available there’, says FPP account director Claire Stockton.

‘It won’t just be a performance venue, like Wembley Arena. Fifty per cent [of the space] will be devoted to performance, and 50 per cent to education. It will be the focal point for anyone who wants to learn to play an instrument in the North-East,’ she adds.

The Sage Gateshead is at the heart of a public and private sector redevelopment of Gateshead Quays, situated on the River Tyne’s south bank, which also includes the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, the Angel of the North sculpture and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge.

The Foster & Partners-designed music centre will feature a 1650-seat main hall, a secondary 450-seat auditorium, rehearsal space, music education and information centres, and public areas including a café, a restaurant and bars.

FPP won the appointment in mid-February, after a three-way, unpaid creative pitch. Group creative director Simon Storey is creative lead on the project.

Pentagram designed the centre’s visual identity (pictured), as well as those for Northern Sinfonia and Folkworks, in 2002.