Brambledown Landscape Services Ltd have completed a £250k External Work scheme on Newcastle Upon Tyne City Centre Quayside, outside the new Live Works Theatre building. Live Works is new £10 million capital scheme by Live Theatre to purchase and develop Quayside frontage and land and buildings adjacent to the theatre, to create new commercial office space, a new public park and a children and young people’s writing centre.

Pioneering North East visualisation specialist ZeroLight have agreed single occupancy of the new landmark Live Works building joining the creative and cultural hub around Live Theatre.

Brambledown Landscapes have created a Live Works Garden, which incorporates Artificial grass areas with outdoor seating, the construction/erection of an attenuation tank, service renches, ducting, electrical cabling, block paving, tarmac works, outdoor lighting columns, sewage tanks, along with Shrub and bulb planting. The works were completed last autumn, with the Tulips and herbaceous planst now popping through. The works look in immaculate condition, despite thousands of people using the gardens on a daily basis, especially whilst waiting for a theatre event to begin. It is something of a suntrap. The works were carried out almost completely in house by Brambledown Landscapes and overseen by Neil Blakelock, James Kears, Jason Dixon and Paul Curry.

Now complete, Live Works will create new revenue streams for the core creative and educational work of Live Theatre, building resilience for the Theatre for the future, and transforming this part of the Quayside.

Live Works has created

• A new landmark building on Newcastle’s Quayside with approximately 1500sqm net of highly desirable premium office space with river views
• New commercial opportunities and visibility on the busy Quayside thoroughfare for Live Theatre
• Refurbishment of a Grade II listed Almshouse into Live Tales, a new children and young people’s writing centre
• Live Garden, a landscaped green space, a new pocket park at the centre of the site with public pedestrian access from the Quayside and a public and performance space managed and programmed by Live Theatre in daily use by tenants, neighbours and the public and transforming this part of the Quayside.
• An additional revenue for the core creative and education work of Live Theatre, and a social, cultural and commercial return to build resilience for Live Theatre for the future.

As the next step in the redevelopment, Live Theatre has just received planning permission to convert the former Flynns bar into a Quayside restaurant, which will also craete an income to invest back into the theatre.

The £10.5m entire project cost has been supported by a £2.1 million grant from the North East European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Programme 2007 to 2013, a loan from Newcastle City Council and grants from Arts Council England, the Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust, the Gillian Dickinson Trust, The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Garfield Weston Foundation, The Sir James Knott Trust, The Monument Trust, Investment and Contract Readiness Fund and the Wolfson Foundation. The letting has been completed with help from letting agents Knight Frank, and legal teams from DWF LLP and Watson Burton.