Past Projects

50th Anniversary of Bangladeshi Independence & First Ocean Road Mela

On Sunday 21st August 2022, organisations and community groups came together to celebrate South Shields’ thriving Bangladeshi community and the milestone of the 50th Anniversary of Bangladesh. The Customs House helped coordinate and plan the activities that took place on the day in Ocean Road. This has lead to the new yearly Ocean Road Mela, coordinated by a steering group made of local people, organisations and businesses.

Drama sessions with The Twisting Ducks

We worked with The Twisting Ducks theatre company on a 13-week programme of drama sessions for people who are autistic and/or have learning disabilities. The Twisting Ducks’s mission is to tackle inequalities and improve wellbeing for neurodiverse people, by increasing opportunities to have their voices heard and to contribute to their community.

Since the end of this pilot, The Customs House have been home to the independently run Twisting Ducks Arts Academy. For more information about term times, sessions and fees, you may contact [email protected].

Art with Parvin, with Srijoni Women’s group

In partnership with Sangini, we run Arts and crafts sessions for women’s wellbeing, facilitated by local Bangladeshi artist Parvin Abdur. Sangini is a Black and minority ethnic (BME) led women’s arts organisation based in South Shields. We jointly run from January until July 2022, and participants from the Srijoni Women’s Group led the creation of the exhibition ‘Amra Shobai Ekhanay: We Are Here’.

Community Engagement with CREST

Boys Youth Group

At the beginning of 2022, we run activities and outings with CREST for boys aged 10-15. To find out more about the current CREST Boys Youth Group, please contact [email protected]

Women’s Coffee Mornings

From October 2021 until February 2022, we run weekly coffee mornings with women from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, with CREST. To find out more about the current coffee mornings, please contact [email protected]

One of the Lads

One of the Lads (Phase 1) was a dance programme exploring masculinity, idenity and stigma around mental health. This project was delivered in partnership with Hit the Ground Running and Future Arts Centre’s Here and Now project, featuring young men from Epinay Business and Enterprise School.

Presenting the voices of South Tyneside’s Maritime Trust and taking inspiration from their stories and memories of the Tyne shipyards. One Of The Lads, celebrates the North East’s industrial heritage and explores concepts of masculinity, mental health and men’s identities within the context of post-industrious North East England.

The R & D phase took place in September 2021 and ended with sharing event at The Customs House.

Toy Theatres for the Community

Working with illustrator Aissa Tyler and CVN print we created 500 toy theatres for children and their families to enjoy over the festive season. These were delivered to Marine Park Primary, Laygate Community School and Bamburgh School, and to the food banks Hebburn Helps and Bede’s Helping Hands (based in Bilton Hall CA). We can’t wait to see the stories that families have made with the help of our pretend stage and five woodland characters.

Care Packages for Our Group Members

Terry Kelly Poetry Prize Anthology – Previous years

The Terry Kelly Poetry Prize celebrates the life of Terry Kelly. The prize encourages young people across the North East of England to develop a love of poetry. Find here the publications to this date.

The Treasure Group

The Customs House have worked with care experienced children and young people since 2008 working with our partners at The PLACE, South Tyneside Council and South Tyneside Fostering Services. Our most recent project was for children aged 13 and under who took part in an urban arts project, in which they learned grafitti art, DJ-ing and rapping/MC-ing.

Youth Theatre’s 10th Birthday 

In 2019, The Customs House Youth Theatre celebrated its 10th birthday by commissioning two new plays for the two groups to perform. These were, ‘Bite Me’ by our former Takeover Young Writer in Residence, Reece Connolly, and ‘How to Explode’ by Alex Oates. Both shows were performed in April and May 2019 in our Main House.

The Room of Small Things

Inspired by the book The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, we worked with sixteen migrant women with our partners Apna Ghar to capture and find a way to share women’s diverse stories of ancestry, heritage, childhood and recollection using “small things” (memories, objects and things that reminded us of rites of passage). They learned creative photography skills and exhibited their work at The Customs House at a celebration event. This project was made possible by generous support from The Community Foundation’s Women’s Fund.

Ours/Us/We Pilot Phase

In 2019, we identified a gap and a need to provide a space for LGBTQ+ young people who identify as LGBTQ+ and to offer them the opportunity to explore diverse art forms in a nurturing environment. We received a small grant from The Tyne and Wear Community Foundation to facilitate a two-hour weekly session during term time as a pilot with a hope to develop the project into something permanent if we demonstrated that we were successfully meeting the unaddressed need in the area.  

We identified a young leader to assist with session facilitation. Melody is non-binary and an emerging presence in the North East art scene. Melody believed in the importance of this project as they were a young person who openly says access to quality arts participation and safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people `saved their life”. As this was a pilot and something completely new for the organisation, we committed to working with a minimum of 5 young people over twelve weeks. 16 young people attended our first session which exceeded our attendance expectations and validated our evaluation that there is a need for safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth within the North East. 

This project started in November 2019. So far, we have worked with 46 LGBTQ+ young people, some travelling 20 miles each week to attend. The group includes young people who are neuro-diverse, BME, home-schooled and Looked After. This queer-led project is now permanent provision at The Customs House.

Pulse (Step Up and Dance/U.Dance)

Over the last 10 years, we have hosted the North and South Tyneside Pulse Dance Platform event; an opportunity for dancers aged 11-19 to perform and share their work at The Customs House, meet other dancers and have the chance to perform at a national dance showcase. This project is in partnership with Dance City, Newcastle and One Dance UK.

Arts in Libraries 

Arts in Libraries in an Arts Council England funded initiative to bring creative projects and events to libraries around the country. Over three years, we worked together with frontline library staff from The Word, and Hebburn and Jarrow Libraries to plan and deliver arts-based events at The Word including creative STEM workshops for children, dance workshops for older people and live music events.

The Customs House Youth Theatre at Jarrow School

Thanks to generous funding from Hays Travel Foundation, we were able to deliver a weekly youth theatre session at Jarrow School for their pupils in Years 9, 10 and 11. During this two year project, the young people performed ‘The Dome’ which was a piece of new writing commissioned for the group by Laura Turner, which they performed in The Customs House Studio. The following year, they took part in National Theatre Connections, performing, ‘Chaos’ by Laura Lomas, which they performed in a specially created immersive theatre space at The Customs House, and at Northern Stage in Newcastle.

National Theatre Connections

The Customs House Youth Theatre have participated in National Theatre Connections since 2011. As part of Connections, the youth theatre works on a new piece of theatre each year, performs at The Customs House and are visited by an associate director from the National Theatre to provide feedback on their work, before transferring their show to the north east partner theatre, Northern Stage. The youth theatre were chosen to perform their interpretation of Cloud Busting, by Helen Blakeman at The National Theatre. Previous shows include, Cloud Busting; Helen Blakeman, The Prince of Denmark; Michael Lesslie, What Are They Like?; Lucinda Coxon, Hearts; Luke Norris, Drama, Baby; Jamie Brittain, Takeaway; Jackie Kay, Musical Differences; Robin French, The Ceasefire Babies; Fiona Doyle, Chaos; Laura Lomas and The Changing Room; Chris Bush.

The Takeover Young Writer in Residence

Now heading into its fifth year, The Takeover Young Writer in Residence is an opportunity for an emerging writer from or based in the north east, aged 25 and under to have their play produced and performed at The Customs House, as part of Takeover.

The young writer is mentored by a more experienced writer, (Laura Turner, Tamsin Daisy Rees, Tom Wells, Emilie Robson) and their work is directed and produced to a professional standard by eight young actors from the region.

Alumni of the Residence are Reece Connolly with WORMTOWN, Elijah Young with Isolation, Andrew Finnigan with Cherryade Supernova & Down The Lines by Owen Saunders.