Newcastle's literary ambitions given a national platform
New writing centre well on the way
“Signalling ambition is what we’re about,” Claire Malcolm said on Tuesday (January 13), concluding an interview on the BBC Radio 4 arts programme, Front Row.
The Old Post Office on St Nicholas’ Street, opposite Newcastle Cathedral, is quite some signal.
“I looked on Google Maps and you’ve got a brilliant portico,” said interviewer Tom Sutcliffe, impressed.
Newcastle City Council have agreed a £1m grant towards a new Centre for Writing and Publishing, adding to the £5m already allocated by the DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) and bringing the total raised or pledged so far – according to the Front Row interview - to £10.5m.
If this is to be the new Centre for Writing and Publishing which has been an ambition of New Writing North’s founding chief executive for several years, then shy and retiring it will not be.
Claire has worked wonders since taking on the job in 1996 when she was allocated a tiny, under-equipped office in Newcastle and tasked with building a support agency for writers from scratch.
New Writing North has helped to turn many aspiring writers into published writers, has initiated valuable award schemes and won over publishers who once paid lip service to talent north of Watford.
The millions pledged to back her vision of a Centre for Writing and Publishing (the ‘and Publishing’ bit I hadn’t heard before) are testament to her tenacity and powers of persuasion and the respect with which she is regarded.
And, presumably, to the rightness of that vision.
But there was just the tiniest note of scepticism in Tom Sutcliffe’s voice during that Front Row interview (that portico for one thing).
“Given that writing is something most writers do alone and you can do it with paper and a pencil, why do you need a centre for new writing?” he asked.
Claire, presumably speaking in a London studio, replied: “Well, I think the word ‘publishing’ in our title might give you a bit of a clue.
“We’re trying to create a way of rebalancing where content and work and writing gets made in the country and we want Newcastle to become a place where writers can work.
“We already have a huge amount of talented writers there. We don’t have much publishing. So we’re trying to square the circle a little bit and make Newcastle and the North East a place where you can grow up and aspire to be a writer or a publisher and come and visit a building where all those things are happening.”
Asked if this would be done via seminars and meetings, Claire replied that it would be “much more than that”.
“There will be commercial publishers moving to Newcastle to open offices. We have a little bit of that already. There will be more of that.
“We’re creating completely new types of jobs in the city and then the pathways into how people can get those jobs… so we already do internships and industry insight things where we take young people from Newcastle to London to meet publishers and to learn about publishing.
“But it’s all in London. The country needs to be a bit more rebalanced so that’s basically our big vision.”
Northumbria University, a supportive ally with which New Writing North runs a master’s course in publishing, intended to relocate their English and linguistics teaching to the new building, she said.
A bookshop and a café, good ways of welcoming in the public, are on the wish list and New Writing North staff would presumably welcome a permanent home after years on the move (the current HQ is on the Northumbria campus).
The prospect of employment opportunities has clearly won the support of funders, as has the chance to do something tangible to improve reading and writing skills in the local population.
“Newcastle is a place where those figures for adult and children’s literacy get worse and worse,” said Claire.
“It’s the National Year of Reading this year and our Mayor in the North East (Kim McGuinness) is very concerned about children’s poverty and literacy is very tied to those kind of outcomes.
“So we want the centre to be a place to convene new ways of working and new ways to address that because it’s a pervasive problem.”
If all that can be encapsulated in one of the grandest buildings in Newcastle – and appropriately one previously dedicated to information and communication, as Claire pointed out – then how wonderful.
What a lovely and wholesome thing to have in a historic part of the city which has seen umpteen former banks repurposed into night spots of various reputation and longevity – and a city, you might argue, which is relatively light on book shops.
But with a building comes risks, as has been demonstrated so often.
My old workplace, Thomson House, an unlovely building but once frequented by about 1,000 people dedicated to print journalism, is now an increasingly shabby eyesore just up the road. It was operational for little more than 50 years.
The much older Lit & Phil library, itself the subject of a fundraising campaign, entered its bicentenary year in 2025 with the clear effects of damp having caused shelves to be emptied.
Many are the arts organisations around the country now saddled with buildings not fit for purpose. And look at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland whose ‘national’ status has done little so far to prevent its intended closure this summer.
So buildings come with a degree of jeopardy. Does a writing centre need a late 19th Century portico? Does it need to be Grade II listed?
There are those outside Newcastle – for New Writing North’s brief now extends right across the north of England – who might question the need for investment in a building situated so far away from them.
But Claire’s vision, pursued so assiduously, is seductive.
She has looked hard for a building. Clayton Street, which the city council is keen to upgrade, was once under discussion and at one point it seemed Bolbec Hall (wonderful synergy, I thought, next door to the Lit & Phil on Westgate Road) was certain to be the place.
Now the focus has settled on the building on St Nicholas’ Street, designed by James Williams and dating from the early 1870s.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” said Claire on Front Row.
“We’ve worked for nearly six years trying to find a building and acquire it and I feel like we had to wait this long to find the absolutely perfect place but we now have.”
A degree of caution remains. Contacting New Writing North subsequently, I was told the development was “almost 99% certain” to happen.
A betting person might just be tempted to have a punt. A writer might knock off an ode to be read at Claire’s wished for grand opening in 2028.
And it will have to be grand, won’t it?