The NewBridge Project supports artists to investigate and challenge the boundaries of contemporary art practice.
The NewBridge Project is an artist-led community comprising of over 80 artist studios, an exhibition space and book shop based in a 29,000sqft former office block in Newcastle city centre.
The NewBridge Project was established in 2010 to provide exchange and support in an engaged and discursive community of artists. The shared workspace is a critical and collaborative environment that allows artists to discuss and develop new ideas and projects.
The NewBridge Project Space provides artists with the opportunity to exhibit in a supportive space that promotes an experimental and critical approach to practice. The exhibition space is dedicated to exploring new and diverse contemporary art practice through a programme of regular exhibitions, screenings and events, supported by responsive talks, publications and broadcasts.
The NewBridge Project continues to develop in response to the needs and interests of its members.

Keeping it real since 1994.
Artist-led, community - based.
Supporting creativity and innovation in visual arts and beyond.

In 1968 the artists Bridget Riley and Peter Sedgley, in search of suitable studio spaces for themselves, seized an opportunity to occupy the ‘Ivory Warehouse’ (known as the ‘I’ Site) in St Katharine Dock, near Tower Bridge, E1. (St Katharine Dock had then been taken over from The Port of London Authority by the Greater London Council.)

In need of support, Riley and Sedgely invited a number of enthusiastic people from diverse backgrounds to create a body of Trustees who all had an active interest in the arts: Tony West, Professor of Law at the University of Reading’s Faculty of Urban & Regional Studies; Irene Worth, an actress, ‘passionately’ interested in the arts; Maurice de Sausmarez, Principal of the Byam Shaw School of Art and Peter Townsend, editor of Studio International. After some initial investigations at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government Professor West had deduced that no provision had been made for artists' studios in London describing this as a paradox: ‘...London is, in a way, the centre of the art world but the artists just cannot find a space to work. We want artists, we need them but, they are left to find their own solution...

The enthusiastic group formed ‘Space Provision, Artistic, Cultural and Educational Ltd., S.P.A.C.E. Ltd'. (abbreviated to S.P.A.C.E.) which was non-profit making. It successfully negotiated a two year lease at low rental for the ‘I’ Site from the GLC.
A friend and supporter of the project, Sir Henry Moore, recalls visiting the site with Riley to assess its suitability as a conducive space for artists to work in: 'The building I was taken into had been derelict since the last war. It had a remarkably, romantic feeling about it.’ Archer suggests that '...the range of this support indicates that the venture was, from the very first, identified as a good thing not only within the narrow confines of the art world, but also for the cultural and economic well-being of the community at large'.

from: 'Artists in East London'
online available at: www.acme.org.uk/download.php?pdf=149‎
(accessed September 2013)