A documentation project co-ordinated by Swingbridge Video in which local filmmakers contribute towards a film looking at the changing taking place around the Grainger Town area of Newcastle as part of the Grainger Town Project. The film speaks with many different people living and working in the area asking them their opinion on what is taking place. The film features a lot of construction work taking place including The Gate leisure complex on Newgate Street which opened in 2002. Title:...

A documentation project co-ordinated by Swingbridge Video in which local filmmakers contribute towards a film looking at the changing taking place around the Grainger Town area of Newcastle as part of the Grainger Town Project. The film speaks with many different people living and working in the area asking them their opinion on what is taking place. The film features a lot of construction work taking place including The Gate leisure complex on Newgate Street which opened in 2002. Title: Grainger Town Video Project: Documenting the Changes An aerial of Newcastle featuring the Centre for Life building and the spire of St Mary’s Cathedral. Inside the cathedral several stained-glass widow’s and a priest reciting a verse on the importance of change. Crowds walk past Grey’s Monument and Eldon Square shopping centre in the city centre while others listen to a jazz band performing on the steps of the monument itself. Title: 2001 A Year of Change Grey’s Monument at night, projected against the side of it a piece of video art. Some of the passersby stop to watch it, others keep walking. Interview with the artist about the rection to his work followed by a vox pop with some of those watching the video. The NatWest bank on the corner of Grey and Market Street changes to a large hording nearby for ‘Exclusive Apartments’ at 93A Grey Street. A vox pop with passersby about if they would want to live here, some would like to, but the costs would be outside their budgets. Inside one of the apartments a spiral staircase leads to a large spacious room overlooking Grey Street below, in the near distance the Theatre Royal. Inside another apartment on the corner of Fenkle and Low Friar Street a young mother plays wither her baby in its crib, as she does so she talks about what it is like living in the flat and her wish to see more residents living in the city centre. She would also like to see a broadening of the use of the city centre than just shopping and drinking. Back around the base of Grey’s Monument a large crowd watch a group of ethnic dancers perform for them. Two street performers wonder around the square wearing a costume giving the impression they don’t have heads. They also carry cages in which sit a paper mâché heads, a small girl looks on warily. Another jazz band now plays around the monument, pedestrians walk past some listening to the music. Filmed at high-speed the camera comes out of an office block to and then around the streets of Grainger Town. A man speaks to the camera saying the city has ‘somewhere to go’ and is ‘taking the people with it.’ He concludes by saying it is the people that make the character of the city. A phantom walk along Grey Street, across the road on the corner with Mosley Street a large building covered in scaffolding and plastic. Inside construction work converting the building into a hotel. At the back of the building more scaffolding and two large skips full of old building waste, two men in hardhats walk past. Standing beside plans attached to the wall a man talks about the work that has and will be doing to convert the building into a hotel, as he talks building work continues. Outside in the street people are asked if they know what’s happening behind the plastic, no one knows. The man then takes the cameraperson on a tour of the worksite, he talks about some of the architectural history of the building and about the work that is currently being done. Back on Grey Street a man says how much Grainger Town reminds him of Bath, a woman says how important the street is for Newcastle. As she talks about development work in the area timelapse footage of demolition and building work taking place in the area. Inside Grainger Market shoppers walk past a variety of stall. Vox pop with people providing details on what they would do to improve the market and bring more people in. An older man stands on Newgate Street, in the near distance construction work on The Gate leisure complex. Archive images of the site in the past morph into the construction site today and people being asked what they think of it. Many are sad to see the old buildings go. Amateur video footage showing demolition work on a 1960s office block built next to The Gate complex. Sitting in a building overlooking it a man explains how happy he is to see it go. From his window an excavator across the road working on the site removing more of the old building’s foundations. Back on the street passersby remember happy memories of the Mayfair Ballroom which was also demolished as part of this development. A road sweeper turns down Monk Street changing to a dumper truck driving past carrying a load of rubble from the demolition site. A Chinese woman complains that the demolition site was making Fenkle Street dirty. Construction work beginning on the site with the voice of various people talking about change taking place in the area. The steel frame of The Gate has been installed changes to a young woman sits in the window of her flat that overlooking the construction site. She has issues with the noise and ask why they do they have to do the noisiest things first thing in the morning. From a window in another flat Blackfriars, the 13th century friary below. Standing in the window looking out onto The Gate constructions site only a few metres away from his flat, the owner or tenant talks about watching the site change and his concern that if construction continues it will block out any light into the flat. Filmed in time-lapse construction work taking place. From the top of a tower crane a panoramic view of both Grainger Town and the construction site below changing to construction workers on site working on the building’s steel frame. A joiner hammers nails into planks of wood holding up a wall, he sits on a bench outside Blackfriars explaining how much he enjoys his work. Back at the construction site work continues on the foundations which are sixty feet underground, the voice of the joiner explains what work has been done. A second worker on the site speaks to the camera about what the site will look like once it is done. Back in her apartment the woman who was seen previously talking about issues of noise is now excited about the prosect of a cinema being built next door. A vox pop with people in the street who are also positive about a cinema. A local priest or vicar sees the complex as being like a spaceship landing, he is concerned that the complex maybe like an American mall. Sitting beside a patio door looking down on a cobbled street below an older man seen earlier in the film explains that he is happy that a cinema with retail outlets will be right on his doorstep. Filmed in timelapse with Blackfriars in the foreground two large tower crane move and dominate the skyline. From a window more timelapse of construction work on The Gate filmed between dawn till dusk. Chinese New Year in Newcastle’s China Town and crowds watching a procession that includes fireworks and a dancing dragon. Another speeded up phantom walk-through Newcastle and Grainger Town this time at night arriving at Westgate House on Westgate Road. A vox pop with passersby who all think the building ugly and out of place. The next day the shutters of the building go up and the camera goes inside, passing through the lobby and heading upstairs to the tenth floor. As the camera goes out onto floor itself a priest at St Mary’s Cathedral talks about a neighbourhood meeting he attended in which a discussion was had about demolishing the building. From a window Newcastle Central Station and the surrounding areas as well as pedestrians walking past below. More voices from people who dislike the building. From across the street Westgate House morphing into an archival photograph of the same site at the turn of the 20th century. The vicar seen previously ends the film by explains that it is about the ‘whole life of a community’. Over the closing credits another speeded up walk through Grainger Town at night. Title: Thanks to Greenall, Winskell & Kish, Land Securities, Lazi Leisure, Miller Construction, Miller Homes, Newcastle City Council, One North East, Save the Children, Sir Robert McAlpine Credit: Video documentors and contributors Paula Adams, John Allen, Michael Campion, Glyn Evans, Keith Gibbon, Bob Guthrie, Nichola Lumley, Ciaran McKeown, Jane Miller, Vicky Sanderson, Bill Sanders, Luke Robertson, Sam West, Sean Western, Martin Whitfield Video steering group Ned Buick, Patrick Dowdeswell, Chris Oldershaw, Nick Robinson Music at Greys Monument Baghdaddies, Groovin High Archive video and photographs Simon Day, Geoff Phillips, Newcastle City Library The phantom walk through Grainger Town arrives at the offices of the Grainger Town Project heading upstairs and arriving at the reception where the woman behind the desk holds up her hand to the camera while speaking with someone on the telephone. Title: A video documentation project by Swingbridge Video for the Grainger Town project Final view of Westgate House with people passing saying they would like to see it demolished. An animation showing the building breaking like glass and disappearing. End title: ‘In a higher world it is other, but here below to live is to change, and to perfect is to have changed often’. Cardinal John Henry Newman