Nick’s efforts beginning to Mushroom
Nov 28 2008 by Alistair Gilmour, The Journal
Furniture designer Nick James has tapped into the North East’s creative spirit with two successful ventures in Newcastle, as he tells Alastair Gilmour
That’s what furniture designer Nick James discovered nearly four years ago when he opened The Mushroom Works on St Lawrence Road on Newcastle’s East Quayside as a centre for artists and designers. He had hardly announced his intention when every one of its 12 studios was signed up – and a waiting list of 30 hopefuls stretched along the front of the building.
Armed with a successful formula he then looked around for a similar project and developed The Brick Works on Hannington Street on the edge of the Ouseburn Valley. Both businesses are operated on community interest lines, which in simple terms, is an organisation set up halfway between a limited company and a charity. It supports practitioners in the creative industries and encourages activities that benefit them all equally. A gallery and showroom displays the works of painters, jewellers, graphic designers and textile creatives.
Nick says: “Our primary aim is to provide affordable work spaces for practitioners of the creative industries in the North East. It also helps with access to funding and that’s been the key component to what’s happening at The Brick Works – we needed the funding to redevelop the building.
“Demand is just incredible – we filled the studios before construction had started. I already had the model at The Mushroom Works that has been recognised nationally and internationally, one that works really well.
“It’s for creative people to do their thing, not for business people, though often they are business people but just don’t like to be called that. It’s going to have a good mix – service designers and ‘dirty’ designers like me who get covered in sawdust. We’ve been supported all along by Tyne Wear Partnership and Newcastle City Council.”
His success was recognised to such an extent that he was invited to Japan to present his experiences in the creative industries to a symposium of government cultural policy makers, using The Mushroom Works as a case study. A cultural exchange programme involving artists and designers has emerged from it.
“It was amazing,” he says. “To do that in our first year was very flattering.”
The Brick Works is a little smaller than the Mushroom Works but provides 12 studios, with painters, graphic designers, service designers, creative writers in residence. The Mushroom Works began life as a Wesleyan chapel and then became the Old Mushroom Brassworks and now Nick’s new acquisition is in the area where one Joseph Hannington made bricks – the very bricks, he believes, that were used to build the Byker Bridge.
“We have a great community spirit,” he says. “We do things together such as three times a day we ring a bell, just like at school, and anyone who wants a break can congregate in the kitchen and have a cup of tea.”
As if being involved in sourcing and developing real estate isn’t enough, Nick also designs and creates contemporary handmade furniture using traditional techniques. “Modern antiques, I like to call them,” he says. “They’ll outlast me and the people who commission them.
“I work mainly in European hardwood using mortise and tenon and dovetail joints by hand rather than by machine. I like to think I’m keeping those skills alive. The pieces are very well finished and very stylish – quality of construction is very important.
“At The Mushroom Works and at The Brick Works, it’s all about keeping things affordable; it’s all for the people there – myself too – and not really for profit.
“It’s quite difficult to understand that some creative people don’t have to be in it for the money. Real creative people have a desire, a need and a passion – you can see it in their eyes – and that’s the sort of person we need to create the community spirit we have.
“If you’d told me four years ago that I’d have 24 artists working in studios in Newcastle, I wouldn’t have believed you. It has taken off incredibly, there’s a big demand for this type of workspace.
“The North East continues to be a real creative place and now graduates are staying on because there’s a market for their work. A lot of people who had been previously working in their bedrooms and front rooms can now have them back.”
Nick has seen at first hand how creativity nurtures creativity, but it also rears its own problems.
“I’m actually running out of space myself,” he says. “I’ve got a studio of 800 square feet and when I moved in I thought it was absolutely huge. Now I’ve got stuff piled up in the passage and in doorways. Perhaps I’ll need to move somewhere else.”
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