On Wednesday, nine people came to on an artist-led tour to find out more about Cone. For some of the people that attended, visiting Cone and hearing the artist speak about it meant that the art work made much more sense to them.

People asked lots of questions about Cone – how long will it last? Where will it go once it has been dismantled? What is Aquadyne used for? And, of course, there were queries on what the future holds for Dunston Staiths. Luckily we had the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust activity manager to provide some answers!

The artist talks about Cone, 10th September 2014

We’d post more pictures on this, but it’s better to link you to Ken Fitzpatrick’s Flickr stream, which he took after touring Cone on Wednesday afternoon.

If you missed these events, you can still get a decent view of Cone from the western end of Dunston Staiths this coming weekend.

The Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust are inviting people to come along and see the renovation work as part of Heritage Open Day:

• Friday 12 September: 1200 -1600
• Saturday 13 September: 1030-1530
• Sunday 14 September: 1030-1530

Stout shoes/boots should be worn, as surfaces are uneven. While a loop of the Staiths will be accessible, lower and upper levels are linked via stairs. Access may be restricted due to poor weather and ongoing restoration work.

- See more by clicking here.

The Royal Geographical Society have a fantastic website where people contribute their walks of Britain so that other people can enjoy them. And so, the 80 years of history that can be seen from the Baltic to Dunston is now available on their website.
The walks are self-guided and you can choose from different formats.The walk booklet contains everything that you need to know including practical information, route maps and the commentary. You can either print it out or download it onto an iPad or eReader. Alternatively you can download an audio version of the commentary onto an mp3 player. You also need to print out the accompanying booklet which contains the essential map and directions as these are not incorporated into the audio.

Let us know what you think at info@jetty-project.info

Angela Connelly, 21 July 2014

Sustainability Cafe at Dunston Community Centre

Last Thursday, six people came to the sustainability cafe that was led by the University of Lancaster. With nine people in total, we thought that this was about as much as the staiths could reasonably handle for safety reasons.

Inside Cone, the word ‘sublime’ was mentioned on more than one occasion. After spending a while on the Staiths, we wandered over to the Dunston Community Centre for a cup of tea and a chat about sustainability.

Cone provoked a wide discussion – from the sustainability of the material to the skills learned by the students working on the art work. Many participants were stepping foot on Dunston Staiths for the first time, and so the art work is subtly helping to engender a conversation on what the future holds for the structure and how access to it can be managed.

That evening, I wandered over to the Baltic to take part in the North East conversation about the Farrell Review. Over wine, someone mentioned to me that Dunston Staiths has appeared as a backdrop in many television programmes and films, including Purely Belter (2000) which shows the Staiths before the gap was created. That’s probably something else to be added to the timeline.

Angela Connelly, 21 July 2014

On Wednesday 4^th June 2014, Angela led a walk out to Dunston Staiths. The Power and the Water research team, from the Universities of Bristol, Nottingham and East Anglia, agreed to be dragged along for some exercise, art and industrial heritage during their busy team meeting schedule.  They are an environmental history initiative that focuses on environmental connectivities that have emerged in Britain since industrialisation including rivers, the national grid, nuclear power and lead mining soughs.

The weather did not bode well. We longed for sunshine but when we saw the morning forecast, we hoped for a spot of meteorological kindness by early evening.

Ambling out from the Quayside, we crossed the swing bridge and headed out along the Keelman’s Way through the Riverside Park. On the way, we spotted many of the art works that weave their way into the landscape: Lulu Quinn’s Rise and Fall (2007), to some earlier examples including Sally Matthew’s Goats (1992), which almost look like live animals,  and Cone (1992) by Andy Goldsworthy, almost hidden, which nods to the industrial heritage of Gateshead. And, as the path wound round, we caught tantalising glimpses of Dunston Staiths in the background.

We plodded on past the Staiths South Bank estate and we spoke about how Wayne Hemingway was approached by Taylor Wimpey in order to design something that went beyond standardised house building. Some of the group said that it looked similar to some housing on the riverside in Bristol. Then the group mused whether there was something about Gateshead that it just needed something like this. The most surprising aspect was the cost of a dwelling: many of the team live, or have lived in, London and Bristol where prices are much higher. Let’s move up north then? We even found the time to sit in one of the communal spaces.

Taking the load off our feet

As we approached the staiths, the group were impressed by the depth and extent of the mudflats. We were transported to Copenhagen in Denmark where the depollution of the harbour area, and some careful design interventions, have not only made it safe to swim, but resulted in a popular outdoor swimming facility. At the Islands Brygge people regularly jump off from the pier. Could the same be done from Dunston Staiths? We did wonder…

Relaxation in Copenhagen

We came to the Marine Management Organisation’s notice for consultation on the Jetty Art project’s proposed construction of Cone. This gave us the opportunity to speak about the art work and the various concepts and ideas that had been flowing around it. “It needs a beacon” said one person, which is an idea that some in the wider community have latched onto. Here, it was because Dunston Staiths looks like it should have a lighthouse on the end of it. We spoke of a connection to the Baltic and another member of our group likened it to the Thames Clippers’ ‘Tate to Tate’ route that takes art lovers speedily between Bankside and Millbank.

A Notice about Cone

David Fraser gave a wonderful account of the construction and history of the staiths. We debated where the timber came from to build it – we think that it came from originally from the Baltic. The original specifications (in the Tyne and Wear Archives) indicate pitch-pine and Memel Timber. David thinks that when coal was exported (mainly to London, but also to Poland and Germany), timber would be placed on the ships for the return leg. But then, the Staiths have continually been patched up over time and we were reminded of the new Ekki timber that is being used to restore Dunston Staiths now: just one more layering up in the long story of this structure which has seen so much change and still remains.

David speaking to the Power and the Water team

We think that we spotted some Oyster Catchers, or they might have just been ducks. No one professed to be a keen bird watcher, although we did wonder whether there might be some tourism potential for twitcher vacations? Are the birds that rare? I was astounded to later learn that bird watching holidays are widely available.

‘You can almost hear the coal rumbling off of the Staiths’ said Peter Coates as he looked back towards the structure. And just when we turned back to come home, a rainbow appeared right on the end of the staiths. Perhaps this is a symbol of what might yet be on the horizon for this wonderful site.

Thanks to the Power and the Water project team for letting me lead this walk, and to David I Fraser, the industrial heritage researcher, who was generous with his time and knowledge.

Did you know that people as diverse as Baruch Spinoza, a seventeenth century philosopher, to Ian McHarg, a scottish landscape designer, have all contributed in some way to the complex debates about sustainability?

Sustainability: Concepts and Timelines

In this graphic, we’ve attempted to map that learning inspired by an idea by the artist Amir Djalali and the architect Piet Vollaard called The Complex History of Sustainability.

We’ve also compiled a timeline of ideas, authors, artists and architects, which shows the diversity of themes within material articulations of sustainability. Running alongside are two timelines. The top tells the story of Dunston Staiths whilst the bottom timeline shows key events in the development of global sustainable development.

It’s interesting to see that despite the demise of the coal industry which had resulted in Dunston Staiths, global coal production continues to soar and, with it, increases in the global temperature.

In the middle is a loose characterisation of interlinked trends, ideas and people based on a schema devised to show that there are many sustainabilities, and, pragmatically, that no one impulse can be privileged. It’s a large pdf file so please zoom in and out to read it. We welcome comments too!

Sources of Information

The infographic was drawn by Graham Bowden of the University of Manchester. Information was compiled by Angela Connelly from:

Demos, T.J., 2013. Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology. Third Text, 27 (1): pp. 1–9. .

Hay, P., 2002. A Companion to Environmental Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

International Institute of Sustainable Development. 2012. Sustainable Development Timeline.

Manns, E., 2000. Carrying Coals to Dunston: Coal and the Railway. Oakwood Press & Ernest Manns, Usk.

Morice, C. P., J. J. Kennedy, N. A. Rayner, and P. D. Jones (2012), Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: The HadCRUT4 dataset, J. Geophys. Res., 117, D08101, doi:10.1029/2011JD017187.

Rutledge, D., 2011. Estimating long-term world coal production with logit and probit transforms. International Journal of Coal Geology, 85, pp. 23 – 33

Shaw, S., 1990. A pictorial essay produced to commemorate the National Garden Festival 1990. Gateshead MBC Education Department, Gateshead.

Early in April 2014, Angela met up with one of their researchers, Dr Leona Skelton (The University of Bristol) who is researching the degeneration and regeneration of the River Tyne. It turns out that not only is Leona from Gateshead, but that she also visited Dunston Staiths during the Gateshead Garden Festival in 1990.

A redshank in flight over the Tyne. © Jonathan Siberry, Licensed for Reuse Under Creative Commons (CC-BY-2.0 UK) via Flickr

Leona has written a wonderful blog about her reflections on how industrial interventions can have a positive affect on urban wildlife, which you can find out more about in the “Environment” section. She raises some interesting questions about the unintended consequences of human influence on nature.

Directly next to Dunston Staiths lies the Staiths South Bank Development. Its design emerged after the fashion designer, Wayne Hemingway, criticised property developers for the “Wimpeyfication” of Britain. This sparked Wimpey to work with the designer, Gateshead Council and others in order to secure planning permission for a unique housing development on former Gateshead Garden Festival land.

In 2003, the first Staiths South Bank properties went on sale. Their future inhabitants could choose the elevation, layout and housing type. A number of features were designed in to make the development more sustainable such as responsibly-sourced cladding. In addition, recycling is communal and there is limited space for cars to encourage more walking and cycling. The first phase of the development sold out within four hours. Wayne Hemingway has recently written a blog post considering the scheme 13 years after he wrote his initial scathing views about contemporary house building.

Whilst Staiths South Bank comprises of relatively new residents, the communities in Dunston and Teams have been established for a much longer period of time. However, many sections of these communities can be considered to be deprived on a number of levels, and have been since the decline of industries such as coal. There has also been much regeneration work and there will be more in the future. At present, Clasper Village in Teams is being demolished. This adds to the recent demolition of “the Dunston Rocket”. Both may be considered to be “failed” housing developments from the 1960s.

Teams, in particular, will also be one of the focus areas of ‘Big Local Gateshead’, a programme which is aiming to develop community skills in order to create better places to live in by building trust, pride in the area and local involvement.

Gateshead Council has undertaken a number of public art projects in and around Dunston and Teams. For example, along the Riverside Park there are a number of works which have been developed with community involvement. The Riverside Rivets (2010) by Andrew McKeown have names of nearby communities marked upon them.

Initially, we identified three distinct communities:
• Artists and Designers
• Urban Professionals
• Geographic Communities

Not long after the project began, we undertook a stakeholder mapping activity to understand all of those who are concerned about Dunston Staiths, how they connected to one another, and the range of their concerns. Here, we are inspired by work on ‘Mapping Architectural Controversies’, which was part of the EU-funded MACOSPOL project.

This was done by analysing publicly available resources such as newspaper articles, policy documents, and websites. As the Jetty Project evolves we will be able to see how the different actors involved and the concerns expressed mutate and realign over time.

The image shows the initial mapping, which was created using the open-source NodeXL plug-in. The lines represent connections. The dots represent the actors – both human and non-human – who are weighted in terms of the number of times that they are appear in the public documents. The colour of the dots represents different concerns.