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Signals from the North - Gateshead International Space Programme™ I
From 1984 until 1992 five National Garden Festivals were held in UK. One of them was in Gateshead in 1990. It lasted 157 days across that summer and received over three million visitors. People loved it and still talk about it today.
The Garden Festivals were the idea of UK Conservative environment secretary Michael Heseltine in 1980. They were based on the German post-war Bundesgartenschau concept for reclaiming large areas of derelict land in cities.
All the festivals were held in areas that had become derelict and poisonous in the wake of industrial decline. They each cost between £25 - £70 million.
I made an edit of TV footage from the Gateshead Garden Festival and put this mix on it as a soundtrack. If anything the original footage is weirder than my edit. It presents a very strange world; giant inflatable Jonathan Swift characters, Civil War/Norman conquest re-enactors, Native Americans banging drums, Baphomet sculptures in amongst the begonias and what look like South Sea islanders with no clothes on playing cricket in front of Gateshead OAPS. A giant space ship was also situated near the banks of the River Tyne, It invited people on board for MISSION:TYNE & WEAR and experience a flight into the stars complete with adapted flight simulator hydraulics and night club lighting. The whole festival looks brilliant.
You can watch the film here >>>>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinAh76S6BE&t=644s
The garden festival itself is presented like some mad dream and in some ways it is. The festivals were produced to encourage global business into areas that were in steep decline. For Gateshead it was hoped the site would be occupied by Japanese and European technological companies. But it never happened and the land that the festival used remained empty for the next 10 years.
The area around the River Team, a once highly toxic tributary of the River Tyne, got redeveloped into a nature park and in 2002 the festival site ended up having expensive Scandinavian inspired houses built on it designed by the Red or Dead fashion designer Wayne Hemingway.
You can still trace the pathways of the Garden Festival as you walk along the River Team today. If you look closely too, in amongst the empty bottles of white cider, discarded laptops, torn suitcases, condoms and nitrous oxide bulbs you'll find remnants of the festival's sculptures and the foundations of the mad caterpillar monorail. It's become an eerie interzone that makes the footage of the Garden Festival seem all the more unreal.
MM
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By signalsmmxFrom 1984 until 1992 five National Garden Festivals were held in UK. One of them was in Gateshead in 1990. It lasted 157 days across that summer and received over three million visitors. People loved it and still talk about it today.
The Garden Festivals were the idea of UK Conservative environment secretary Michael Heseltine in 1980. They were based on the German post-war Bundesgartenschau concept for reclaiming large areas of derelict land in cities.
All the festivals were held in areas that had become derelict and poisonous in the wake of industrial decline. They each cost between £25 - £70 million.
I made an edit of TV footage from the Gateshead Garden Festival and put this mix on it as a soundtrack. If anything the original footage is weirder than my edit. It presents a very strange world; giant inflatable Jonathan Swift characters, Civil War/Norman conquest re-enactors, Native Americans banging drums, Baphomet sculptures in amongst the begonias and what look like South Sea islanders with no clothes on playing cricket in front of Gateshead OAPS. A giant space ship was also situated near the banks of the River Tyne, It invited people on board for MISSION:TYNE & WEAR and experience a flight into the stars complete with adapted flight simulator hydraulics and night club lighting. The whole festival looks brilliant.
You can watch the film here >>>>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinAh76S6BE&t=644s
The garden festival itself is presented like some mad dream and in some ways it is. The festivals were produced to encourage global business into areas that were in steep decline. For Gateshead it was hoped the site would be occupied by Japanese and European technological companies. But it never happened and the land that the festival used remained empty for the next 10 years.
The area around the River Team, a once highly toxic tributary of the River Tyne, got redeveloped into a nature park and in 2002 the festival site ended up having expensive Scandinavian inspired houses built on it designed by the Red or Dead fashion designer Wayne Hemingway.
You can still trace the pathways of the Garden Festival as you walk along the River Team today. If you look closely too, in amongst the empty bottles of white cider, discarded laptops, torn suitcases, condoms and nitrous oxide bulbs you'll find remnants of the festival's sculptures and the foundations of the mad caterpillar monorail. It's become an eerie interzone that makes the footage of the Garden Festival seem all the more unreal.
MM