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…and a Common Room for the Region

Heritage

Vision & Transition

The Great North Institute

Heritage 2

Vision & Transition 16

Catherine Miller, President, North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers. Photo: KG Photography

At this pivotal point in the history of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME), our purpose in preparing this document is twofold.

We wish to both:

• Sketch the story of the mining of coal in the North East since the 18th Century and to place the Royal Chartered North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, its building and its collection within that history.

• Explain our strategy to provide the Institute, its Grade II* listed building and its internationally important collection with a sustainable future that protects and respects our industrial and engineering heritage but also provides a place for a programme of debate about the future of our Region.

We believe that we have the opportunity to play as important a part in the contemporary debate about the future of the North East of England in the 21st Century as the

original Institute played – globally – in the development of the coal industry and the Industrial Revolution that it provoked and then fuelled – in the 19th Century.

We set out the key milestones on the journey of discovery into the history of the Institute and the lessons we have drawn from that history to inform our approach to the future. We conclude by summarising the present position and our plans for wider consultation during 2017.

That consultative phase will include our approach to: building design; business model; governance arrangements and – most importantly – the ideas we have for the themes and content of our programme.

Our hope and plan is that this programme will be ‘on the road’ in the Region while the building is closed for renovation work in 2018 and further shaped and developed through engagement with partners, to coincide with our reopening in late Spring of 2019.

As the first female President of the Institute in its 165-year history, I pay tribute to the achievement of the many men who have preceded me in the Office. I also commit myself, my colleagues on the NEIMME Council and on the Steering Group established to drive our project forward, to deliver a new role for the Institute which will be informed by, and in the service of, all the people and communities of the North East.

We began by asking what the unique aspects of heritage are for which the Institute holds stewardship responsibility and what we might learn from that heritage to shape and define the future.

Catherine Miller, President,North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers.

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Foreword

The Great North Institute…and a Common Room for the Region

1715–2015 | Our Unique Contribution to Heritage

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On 18th December 2015, we commemorated the 150th Anniversary of the death of our founding President, Nicholas Wood, with a lecture given by Dr Bill Lancaster.

He focused on Wood’s role as a dynamic entrepreneur and engineering innovator within an extraordinary cohort of men, many of them educated at Mr Craiggy’s school in Crawcrook. Dr Lancaster highlighted their first major project together in the sinking of the first deep pit through the limestone at Hetton-le-Hole in the early 1820s.

The lecture was given on the day that the last shift in the last deep pit in the UK came to the surface at Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire.

At the commemoration, the members present observed a minute’s silence to mark respect for the end of ‘a great industry’.

It was a powerful and poignant moment made pivotal by the announcement immediately

afterwards that the NEIMME Council had agreed the night before to reject an offer to purchase its building, accept a Heritage Lottery Fund Transition Award and embark on its Development Strategy.

That day suggested ‘the capping of the shaft’ of the part of our regional, national and global heritage for which our Institute could offer stewardship.

In the future, we would specialise in the heritage of deep extractive mining for minerals, particularly but not exclusively coal, and the engineering and engineers that made it possible. We would focus on the historic, social, economic, environmental and political contexts with which mining and engineering interacted and operated in this Region and beyond.

If 2015 marked the end of that history in the UK, then when should we begin our journey?


3The Last Shift, Kellingley Colliery, North Yorkshire. Photo: © Bruce Adams, The Daily Mail.

1715 | The World of William Brown

Coal has been mined in the North East of England since Roman times. It was export of our coal by sea to London that enabled the Capital to grow in the 16th and 17th Centuries and by the mid-18th Century coal from the Great Northern Coalfield was beginning to fuel the acceleration of the Industrial Revolution across the country.

Key to this acceleration were two developments in 1715. The first was the introduction of effective steam power for pumping water from the mines onto a major coalfield. Spearman’s map of 1715, which is in the Institute’s collection, illustrates what is believed to be the first such combination in the world at Tanfield Lea in that year.

The second was the clarification by law that – whilst the owner of the land was the owner of the coal beneath it – the tenants enjoyed rights under common law:

“their tenants or farmers of the collieries by themselves, their workmen, servants, or agents time beyond memory, have enjoyed and ought to enjoy the right to sink pits, work ye colemines and collieries under ye same, and to lead away the coles gotten, and to do every other needful and necessary act for the winning and working thereof, paying reasonable damages to the owners of such lands.”

Natural resource and new technology were able to combine within a new legislated framework to extraordinary effect and the consequent centrality of the North East to accelerated industrial expansion cannot be underestimated.

Output of coal by mining regions in 1750

Coalfield % of total

North East 37.4

West Midlands 15.7

Scotland 13.7

Yorkshire 9.5

Lancashire 6.7

Wales 4.2

By 1775, a visiting French engineer (Gabriel Jars) observed that the twin engines at Walker were by far the largest in Europe and therefore, at that time, in the world.

Key to much of this innovation and expansion was William Brown of Throckley, born in 1717.

Brown died in 1782, a year after George Stephenson was born. In 1795 Nicholas Wood was born, the man who was to be the first President of the Institute and to whom George Stephenson was to entrust the training of his son, Robert.


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Newcomen Engine. Spearman’s Map 1817. Twin Engines at Walker 1865.

1795 | Mr Craiggy, Nicholas Wood and his Cohort

Around the turn of the Century, a group of farmers/colliery operators had combined to recruit Mr Craiggy – a noted mathematician and map-maker – to lead a specialist school at Crawcrook for their sons and others who seemed to have the necessary aptitude for engineering, technical drawing and business.

The boys all worked underground as well from the age of 12, or even younger, and clearly formed a bond – they were often members of the same ‘watch club’ – that would last throughout their professional

lives. Wood himself is sent to work with George Stephenson at Killingworth where he contributes substantially to the development of the Miners’ Safety Lamp. The group he led included George Elliott, William Coulson, Thomas Young Hall and J.B. Simpson.

By the early 1820s – still very young men – they are challenging the conclusions of John Buddle, the Tyneside based premier mining engineer of the day, who states that there is no coal to be found below the limestone. They are part of the team that sink the first deep pit through the limestone at Hetton-le-Hole, taking the coal out on the River Wear.

Fortunes are made through the new geological knowledge and engineering innovation but, at the same time, the scale of the new pits mean that disasters, when they occur, kill and injure many more men and render more families destitute. Popular concern and unrest is growing.


Thomas Young Hall, invented the tub, cage and rail guide systems for raising coal.Mr Craiggy’s home and school in Crawcrook.

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William Coulson, the Great Sinker.

Nicholas Wood.

George Elliot, 3rd President of NEIMME. Edward Fenwick Boyd, co-founder of the College of Physical Science.

George Stephenson.

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1852 | Founding of the Institute

In 1852 a meeting at the Mill Inn in Seaham resolves to found the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers with the motto Moneo et Munio: ‘I protect and I advise’. The primary motivation seems clearly to have been one of Victorian civic duty but there were other factors:

• Enlightened self-interest – a safer pit was generally a more profitable one

• The need to inform the imminent regulation of the mines

• The creation of a ‘profession’ and the control of qualifications

• The desire for the subject to be taught at University level.

The opening of Central Station in 1850 made locations nearby a clear choice for mining engineers with access to trains and the Institute began to meet at the Literary and Philosophical Society, then at the Westmorland Hall on the site of the

current building. The Transactions – which date from the first formal meeting – record this from Nicholas Wood’s first Presidential address:

The object of the Institution is twofold:

First – By a union or concentration of professional experience, to endeavour if possible, to devise measures which may avert or alleviate those dreadful calamities, which have so frequently produced such destruction to life and property, and which are always attended with such misery and distress to the mining population of the district.

Second – To establish a Literary Institution, more particularly applicable to the theory, art, and practice of Mining, than the Institutions in the locality present, or which are within the reach of the profession in this locality.

Thereafter, through monthly meetings the transactions track the Institute’s concerted address to these objects whilst, simultaneously, the influence and wealth of individual members grows.

As an example, in 1863, George Elliot, who had begun his working life at nine years old as a trapper boy at the Penshaw Mine before attending Craiggy’s School, formed a partnership which bought the Powell Duffryn-owned coalfields of South Wales for £365,000.

In 1865 Nicholas Wood died and in 1867 his colleagues and friends resolved to construct the Wood Hall in his memory, adding Neville Hall to the brief for the building as what was thought to have been a speculative office development.


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9Tyne God wood carving, Wood Memorial Hall.

1872 | The Building, Neighbours and Tenants

It is difficult to imagine the shock that the arrival in 1872 of Archibald Dunn’s ‘High Victorian Gothic’ building must have sent through ‘Tyneside Classical’ Newcastle whose architects (literally and metaphorically) Dobson, Clayton and Grainger were contemporaries of Wood. Perhaps on the same scale as Richard Rogers’ Pompidou Centre in Paris?

The Liberal establishment of the Region in the Literary and Philosophical Society building next door that had previously dominated their 1850s neighbour, the Westmorland Hall, who now found themselves overtopped, may not have been fans.

What we do know is how strongly the Mining Institute felt about the Stephenson Statue commissioned by that same establishment showing the great engineer and his workforce draped in togas!

What is still clear today is the power of the position of the Institute midway between two cathedrals, a new railway station and the old Town Hall. This was also a radical building in two other ways.

Firstly, and remarkable for its time, it was an entirely secular one – there are no religious texts or images anywhere in its design. Secondly, it clearly proclaimed its ‘Regional’ credentials with the armorial shields above the ground floor windows representing the coal ports and coal towns, of the whole of the Great Northern Coalfield.

Beyond this, we have become convinced that the Neville Hall was not a speculative development; the mixture of first tenants suggests the deliberate ‘clustering’ of synergistic expertise, connections and resources under one roof.

On the second floor, academic research in the College of Physical Sciences of Durham University, which was later to become the Engineering Department of King’s College and Newcastle University. On the first floor, the Coal Trades Associations of Northumberland and Durham, the colliery owners and the venture capitalists of their day. On the ground floor was the Board Room of the Blyth and Tyne Railway (logistics).

Completing the network was the bridge built to connect the Institute to the Literary and Philosophical Society, then housing the Natural History Society’s collection – a hobby of the landowners – the holders of ‘old money’ and the owners of the coal.

At the heart and hub of the cluster sat the Wood Memorial Hall and the engineers.


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1865 1872

1872“The North of England Mining Institute is rooted in the Great Northern Coalfield that underpins our Region from the Tweed to the Tees. The global success of the iron, steel, chemical and other major industries of the Tees Valley was fuelled by the coal that we produced

in the Region. That production was made significantly safer for all who worked in the industry by the members of the Mining Institute.

I welcome the creation of the new Great North Institute to take responsibility for the magnificent Headquarters building and collection and its commitment to exploring the consequences for the people and communities of the region – and more widely – of the Industrial Revolution that began here in the North East of England.”

Mayor David BuddChair, Tees Valley Combined Authority.

1872–1912 | A Hub for a Knowledge Economy

Professor Margaret Jacob is one the world’s pre-eminent scholars of the Industrial Revolution. She researched her latest book, The First Knowledge Economy extensively in our archive, which she describes as ‘One of the two most important collections in the world for the study of the birth of the Industrial Revolution’. She based much of her thesis on what she found here arguing that, in this new history of economic development:

‘Minds, books, lectures and education became central. Armed with knowledge and know-how and inspired by the desire to get rich, entrepreneurs emerged within an industrial culture wedded to scientific knowledge and technology. Innovative engineers and entrepreneurs sought to make sense and profit out of the world around them’.

The ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurial Cluster’ that was created here in 1872 is a clear physical representation of her hypothesis.

The economic geographer, Professor John Tomaney, has gone further and suggested that it is not until we reach ‘Silicon Valley’ that there is another such concentration of globally important (and massively profitable) innovation in one ‘tight’ physical location during one short time period.

He points out that both were ‘fuelled’ by the absolute certainty of the global profitability of their product and in both cases, that ‘product’ was engineering knowledge and skill rather than either coal or silicon. Neither the merchant ships nor the Royal Navy could steam to the British Empire and beyond without the skill to get coal around the globe.

Questions and discoveries were fed back to the Institute, debated and the findings published in the Transactions, in turn distributed internationally and translated.By 1911, the Institute had over 2,300 accredited members with 45% of them working abroad and – from their surnames – with most from the North of England.

Drawing on South African research, we can illustrate this with the first modern coal mine in the country being sunk by George Elliot’s nephew at Molteno in the Eastern Cape and named in his honour ‘The Penshaw Mine’.

And the engineers were, of course, followed by the skilled miners such as Peter Lee who sold his skill and strength in America and then in South Africa where – after a Damascene conversion to a sober and politically and religiously committed life – he returned to become the reforming political leader of the first socialist County in the world at Durham.


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Engineers and Entrepreneurs

Venture Capital and Production

Research

Land and Resource Ownership

Transport and Logistics

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The 20th Century | Decline

The interwar years saw the industry affected by the overall depression and the central importance of the North East of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers to the industry declines. The profession also wanes as other more profitable fields are opened and as London becomes the unquestioned base for Professional Institute Headquarters.

With Nationalisation and The Plan for Coal, decline across much of the North Eastern Coalfield is mirrored in the fortunes of the Institute itself with the loss of the building’s griffins and ornamentation in the 1950s, followed by the loss of professional accrediting powers (and a vital source of income) to Universities in the ’60s. In the mid ’70s Neville Hall is sold to the Masons to bolster reserves and the mid ’80s sees the miners’ strike and then the apparent certainty of closure of the industry in the Region, with the consequent end to the ‘seam of membership’ that has sustained the management of the Institute in terms of both finance and voluntary effort.


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“Coal production in the North East peaked in 1913 at 56 million tons, however the number of miners increased reaching more than a quarter of a million in 1923. If we add ancillary workers to this number and contrast it with the regional population of two million, the majority of the male workforce was employed in coal mining. Those born in the region in the decades after 1945 invariably have at least one grandparent who was employed in the coal industry.”

Dr Bill Lancaster, Historian.

…and a determination to address it

In her book This Changes Everything, the Canadian environmental activist, Naomi Klein talks of the new ‘sacrificial lands of the earth’ such as the Alberta Tar Sands and the Kentucky Coalfields. Her description of them provokes memories of J.B. Priestley’s description of Shotton in his English Journey of 1932:

“A clutter of dirty little houses all at the base of what looked like an active volcano, the notorious Shotton tip, a man-made smoking hill. The atmosphere was thickened with ashes and sulphuric fumes like that of Pompeii, the whole village and everybody in it was buried in this thick reek.”

The point, however, is that from the 1930s onwards the nature of an industry that exhausted its reasons for particular locations, combined with a political culture determined to ameliorate those

consequences, produced a series of innovative attempts to address the social and human and – in time – environmental consequences of that de-industrialisation.

Whether the Team Valley Trading Estate or the first national public funding of the arts through the Settlement Movement or the A,

B, C, D villages and New Towns of County Durham or T. Dan Smith’s NEDC, or the NDC and the Great North of the 1980s, the Region can perhaps claim to have been not only the first ‘sacrificial land’ but also the first test bed for trying to address its consequences? That too is part of our heritage.

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Shotton.

The 21st Century | The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers

Through the 1990s and into the new Century a sequence of initiatives to find a new future for the buildings faltered, culminating in the sudden collapse of the joint venture with the Literary and Philosophical Society in 2010.

It is shortly after this new low point in the Institute’s fortunes that the Masons place Neville Hall on the market and there is the opportunity to reunite the building again. The support of Newcastle City Council with a mortgage, makes the purchase possible but brings the fiscal cliff closer as operating costs rise.

A search for a long-term tenant and co-investor, led by Gavin Black, produced a serious expression of interest from an established leisure company, but one that would have required the sale of the building with only a 25-year tenancy of the top floor available thereafter for the work of the Institute.

Faced with this existential decision, the Institute Council responded by recommitting to a final attempt to find a future that could retain the integrity of the Royal Chartered Institute itself and its building and collection.


“I have been familiar with the Institute – that glorious piece of Victorian Gothic in downtown Newcastle – since I was a boy. I grew to love it over the years, even more latterly as its use, like the industry it served, began to decline. I have sat spellbound in the wonderful Wood Memorial Library and steeply raked Edwardian lecture theatre, listening to writers, scientists and philosophers. The Institute’s plans for the future will bring new life to this tarnished jewel of Victorian England. What excites me most is the idea that the Mining Institute can find a new role and purpose as a dynamic centre for knowledge, learning and research across a much wider range than in the past; not just mining but the entire, distinctive history and culture of the North East of England.”

Michael Chaplin, Writer.

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Vision & Transition

17The Wood Memorial Hall.

2015 | The Vision and the Challenge

In September 2015, the Council of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers agreed to turn down the offer to purchase its building and to adopt a Development Strategy that would be a ‘last chance’ to retain the integrity of the original building and allow the Institute’s own programme and collection to remain there.

As a starting point, NEIMME Council embraced a new Vision for the future and issued a challenge that it proceeded to address with energy.

The strategy hinged and was dependent on the success of a sequence of applications to be made to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to provide a newly renovated building, re-organised collection, new governance structure and a programme of activities. These would – in turn – deliver the substantial ‘benefit to heritage and to the people and communities of the North East’ needed to justify a very substantial award from the HLF, nationally.

Key to success would be the submission of a compelling case and high-quality applications in what is acknowledged to be a highly competitive environment.

The VisionThe North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers – founded to address the safe and effective exploitation of the natural resources of the North East - will create as a legacy a new Institute dedicated to exploring the future of that Region, its people and the distinctive contribution it could make to the global as well as regional consequences of the Industrial Revolution that began – and ended – here.

The ChallengeIf a future for the building could be found that:

• Delivered a range of public benefits to the North East in line with the Vision

• Indicated – believably – that capital funds could be raised to restore and adapt the fabric of the building and conserve the collection

• Demonstrated that a sustainable business model could be found to operate the building and deliver the public benefits

• Guaranteed support for NEIMME’s own programme in perpetuity…

…then NEIMME was prepared – in principle – to transfer its assets of property, collection and staff to a new charitable entity charged with stewardship of those assets and the delivery of a programme of public benefits.


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“I am fascinated by the potential for bringing the Institute back to life and purpose and restoring it to its former glory. A refurbished building providing access to a wide range of activities and engaging people from across the North East would be a fitting complement to a past in which the Institute made such a significant contribution to the history of a major industry and the lives of all who worked in it”.

Lord Jeremy Beecham.

Catherine Miller, President, in the 1902 Edwardian Lecture Theatre. Photo: KG Photography

2015 | Benefit – Beyond Heritage – to the North East

The central section of this report has focused on the identification of the particular elements of heritage that are embodied in our building, its collection and the history of our Royal Chartered Institute. We feel confident in this analysis and can see many connections from it to contemporary debates within the fields of Engineering and Cultural Heritage.

Our collection will be central to delivering these specific benefits. Our building and its potential for engagement with a far wider public demanded a different approach.

During the last 12 months around a hundred people from various communities of interest have toured the whole building and been engaging in discussion about its future potential.

How could we craft a Mission for our project that added value to our work to promote the heritage and act as a connector between our vision and the programme that we could promote in a restored building? We asked what principal concerns for the future would be shared by the 100 members of NEIMME who attended the Wood Memorial

Lecture on 18th December and the 100 or so new visitors.

The answer seemed twofold. There was certainly a concern for the preservation and greater understanding of the unique industrial and engineering heritage we had identified. It was also allied to a deep concern for – and commitment to – the future of the people and communities of the North East of England. This suggested that our project might address the past and the future differently.

The programme of the Royal Chartered Institute would focus its work on the ‘deep’ industrial and engineering heritage in which it had played such a significant role.

The new entity we were to create would begin from a wider concern with the future of the people and communities of the North East and join with NEIMME to promote the role of the engineering and cultural industries in addressing that future.


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Vision & Transition

Virgin Trains is committed to supporting customers and communities on its East Coast route, and to playing a role in promoting and protecting the history and heritage of the railway and the communities it serves.

It is a near neighbour of the Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, an impressive building of great heritage significance to the North East with enormous potential. Virgin Trains is actively exploring ways in which it can support the Institute’s exciting plans and bold vision for its future.

It is pleased to support the Institute in its application to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Virgin Trains.

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“At a time when there is much debate about a Northern Powerhouse, it is instructive to remember an earlier period when the North East was such a clear global leader in so many fields of engineering, not only in the mines and on the railways but also in my own field of electrical engineering. It was the visible signs of our engineering past in and around the city that helped inspire me into the profession. I am committed to encouraging many more young people to consider engineering as a profession – and in this the Institute

can make a real difference.”

Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central.

Women in Engineering Event, 23 June 2016.

2015 | Pulling the Project Together in a Name

The clue to a name may lie in how we are colloquially referred to in central Tyneside (and by ourselves). We are ‘The Institute’.

Interestingly, in Central London, the name would imply a (rather grand) building as so many 19th Century professional Institutes are based there. Outside London – in England – we are one of a very small number that were wealthy enough when founded to endow ourselves with a substantial Regional Headquarters.

There are also of course in the North East and in other coalfields, specific references to the Miners’ and other ‘Institutes’ established as places of self-education and learning – and complemented of course by the Social Clubs within the Club and Institute Union.

We intend to promote an ambitious programme beyond access to our restored building and unique collections and archive. Such a programme will include presentations, debates, discussions, training, conferences and publications (live and online) with a focus on our Industrial and Engineering Heritage and our shared concerns for the future of the people and communities of the North East of England.

Were we to be using this description in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment, we would be talking about A Common Room for the Region.

In testing this concept, we have extended it to include consideration of what might be the common causes of our current conditions and the identification of those

with whom we might make common cause in addressing them. Our vision might also suggest a particular concern with the atmosphere and the environment in the context of the global commons.

If then, we are known colloquially as a destination as ‘The Institute’ and the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers will take the lead responsibility within our programme for Heritage, then what should the new entity be called?

Linking back to our roots in the Great Northern Coalfield but also referencing our history of regional self-help and promotion, we adopt The Great North Institute as our working title.


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Vision & Transition

“The Institute’s importance in the history of our region during the decades in which so much of the world’s Industrial Revolution was fuelled – intellectually as well as literally – deserves to be better known and understood. There is much to be gained from linking the history of this remarkable building, collection and institution to the wider industrial history of the North East. In addition to telling the story of our industrial heritage to both residents and visitors alike, I believe that the Mining Institute has an important contemporary role to play. Given its central location and its position as a vibrant and unique meeting and events space, I could see it supporting our work to attract business events and investors to the area”.

Sarah Stewart, Chief Executive,NewcastleGateshead Initiative.

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Primary School Visit and Activities.

Visit by Matthew W. Barzun, Ambassador of the United States of America to the UK and Northern Ireland.

The Late Shows in the Wood Memorial Library. Public debate in the Edwardian Lecture Theatre.

2016 | What Happens Next?

In December 2015, the Institute learnt that the first of those applications to lay the foundations for its Development Strategy had been successful, providing £65,000 of Heritage Lottery Fund Transition Funding. This complemented £50,000 of funds from the Reece Foundation and the commitment of £35,000 of its own staff and volunteer time.

By this stage, however, the Institute’s cash flow was on a knife edge. It was only the exemplary ‘bridging’ support we had received from the Reece Foundation and Platten Family Fund and the extraordinary commitment of a tiny staff that was keeping the building open. However, with the new HLF funds in place, Newcastle City Council was approached and – despite their own

financial situation – they were able to offer a short term repayment holiday on both the capital and interest on the mortgage we have with them dependent on continuing HLF support. The knife edge did not disappear, but it did recede.

We have submitted our next application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for Phase 1 Development funding of £600,000. If successful, there is a probability of further success with the larger application of circa £4,000,000 in November 2017, as long as additional fundraising targets of circa £2,000,000 are met and there are no substantial negative variations to the anticipated project costs and outcomes described at this stage.


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Vision & Transition

2017–2019 | Development and Delivery

Subject to the availability of the next phase of funding, we now embark on detailed consultation and planning around:

The Building

• The restoration and renovation of our building – inside and out, fully accessible and fully equipped for the 21st Century.

The Collection

• The re-organisation, re-evaluation, digitisation and preservation of our collection – one of the two most important in the world for the study of the early stages of the Industrial Revolution – and its promotion as an international resource.

Governance

• Our future governance structure, where:

• The Royal Chartered Institute’s future and programme focused on the industrial and engineering heritage of the Region and the mining engineering profession is guaranteed ‘in perpetuity’.

• A newly formed body, The Great North Institute, takes responsibility for the building, collection and staff, and for a new programme focused on the future of the people and communities of the North East.

• A dedicated trading company provides the commercial management of (and catering for) the ‘Region’s Common Room’, marketed regionally, nationally and internationally with profits covenanted back to support programme.

Programme

• The next level of detail of our future programme – developed through consultation within the Region and with engineering and heritage interests nationally.

• Working groups and open meetings will be arranged around particular themes and subject areas.

We are working with a draft mission statement for the new Institute:

To promote the wellbeing of the people and communities of the North East of England by:

• Improving understanding of the significance of our industrial and engineering past.

• Exploring new and sustainable ways to realise our potential in the future.

The earlier vision and the emerging mission point to some themes around the linkages within and between:

• Energy, engineering and the environment

• Infrastructure, transport and connectivity

• Career choices, apprenticeships and young professionals in the Region

• International, professional and institutional networks

• Culture, heritage and education

• Communities, Civic and Civil Society.

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How can you be involved?

If you would like to be involved further in our work, please contact:Peter StarkDevelopment DirectorNorth of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical EngineersNeville Hall, Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE.

E mail: [email protected]

“The Mining Institute is one of the North’s most astonishing buildings. Astonishing because it has one of the UK’s most beautiful libraries at its heart, but also for what it said about the intellectual and cultural aspirations of those who created and exploited the Industrial Revolution in the North. That those responsible took care not only to build a centre that housed a world-class collection of books, but also a lecture theatre, so that the Institute was a cultural as well as intellectual centre, seems extremely important.

The Institute is an emblem of how the region has always connected its past resources with an ambition for the future. A reminder that mining always meant digging into the human talent of the Region. How a pride in our intellectual life was always central to the most pragmatic aspirations for our future. Its place as a self-confidently Regional building in the centre of Newcastle, literally and metaphorically, makes it a commanding symbol of the North East’s historical position as the engine of the world.

As a building it is a hidden gem. As an idea it was and is visionary; full of hope, seriousness of intent and an imaginative breadth that makes it unique and invaluable.”

Lee Hall, Writer, author of Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters

The first, Transition, stage of the Institute’s Development Strategy supported by:

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