Sage adds up to great value for the region

Dec 17 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal

AS the doors of The Sage Gateshead opened for the first time at 5pm on December 17, 2004, a group from the Bedlington Women’s Institute in Northumberland were first inside.

As holders of some of the 1,500 free tickets handed out for that night’s opening celebrations, they were among the first to hear the disembodied voice of Ros Rigby, performance programme director of the new institution, declare it “a very, very proud moment for all of us after many years of waiting”.

As befits a new building boasting perfect acoustics, the co-founder of Folkworks could be heard with crystal clarity. Five years later, it’s time to celebrate again, and this time there’s statistical evidence to support the music centre’s importance to the region.

Since 2004, more than three million people have visited architect Sir Norman Foster’s landmark building high above the south banks of the Tyne.

Beneath its curved roof there have been more than 200,000 music-making sessions and 2,000 performances, to say nothing of 500-plus conferences attended by more than 100,000 delegates.

Forty new musical works have been commissioned and premiered. Forty-eight visiting orchestras and some 1,300 artists have performed music from every genre.

Sage staff – 550-strong and headed by general director Anthony Sargent – say the building and its activities have contributed £146m to the North East economy which is “more than three times the cost of the building”. Although The Sage Gateshead is most conspicuous as a concert venue, with two main halls and other performance spaces on its various levels, it serves the whole region and, in some respects, the whole country.

Over the last half-decade, Sage staff have provided music-making sessions to more than a million people in more than 1,000 different places across the North East and Cumbria. It has become established worldwide as a centre of musical excellence, attracting performers of the highest calibre.

But it has also striven to have less and less impact environmentally, reducing its carbon footprint over five years so that electricity consumption is down by 25.61% and gas by 28%.