How late it was

The North East’s annual evening culture crawl ‘The Late Shows’ kicked off in style for the second year on 17 May. One of NewcastleGateshead’s major arts attractions, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art was one of more than 20 venues to participate in this social event. BALTIC had participated in the inaugural event in 2007. All four galleries were open to the public, and there were drinks promotions and a live band. This worked well and it was a fun night. However, we felt that those who attended were the region’s ‘culture vultures’, a group of people who regularly attend our previews and who we already communicate with well. We were also aware that with only one exhibition due to be open on The Late Show’s evening in 2008 (the other galleries being closed for installation) we needed radically to rethink the kind of programme we could offer.

Bharti Kher’s exhibition Virus had just opened in our Ground Floor gallery space and was proving very popular, but we needed to enhance our offer. We began to plan with two clear objectives: first to reach out to a new audience and offer visitors the chance to have a closer, more personal experience with the art, and second to enhance the relationship BALTIC has with the thriving visual art scene in the region. It was decided that to achieve this, the learning and programme teams would work together. BALTIC’s freelance artist team offered us a fantastic pool of highly regarded regionally based artists. BALTIC commissioned three of these artists to create new work based on the theme ‘The Enchanted Moment’.Karen Davies, Catherine Bertola and Natalie Frost, were briefed to create their vision in a location very popular with BALTIC’s tourist visitors: the space on Level 5 features a huge picture window overlooking the world famous view of the city’s bridges and skyline. We wanted to connect with these non-arts visitors.

Work was displayed on Level 5 and also inside the lifts, while Karen Davies and Natalie Frost were available to chat to visitors about their work. Prerecorded interviews with the artists were shown on plasma screens in a comfortable informal lounge area, a resource that would normally only be available in the designated learning space we call Quay. By bringing this out onto the gallery floor we could show a snapshot of what BALTIC has to offer. Working with our local partners and fellow art venues on The Late Shows, we benefited from shared resources, most significantly a national and regional publicity campaign and the culture crawl bus – a special service delivering visitors from venue to venue throughout the evening. This helped us reach visitors of other galleries who may not have visited BALTIC recently or perhaps have never visited at all. We kept the café bar open until late, and our inhouse catering team created four Enchanted Moment cocktails and a delicious layer cake – all of which proved a huge success. From anecdotal feedback from the 650 attenders, it was clear that many were either new or lapsed attenders. We have been thrilled at the success of the event and the continued success of The Late Shows across the city. It may even have inspired us to do more evening events.