A monumental new artwork has transformed an overlooked Newcastle wall. But behind it, something much more significant is taking shape: a new creative campus offering North East talent another route into music, performance, film and television - and another reason not to leave the region to begin
There is a wall on St James’ Boulevard in Newcastle that people might once have passed without looking.
It was large, conspicuous and somehow still anonymous: one of those blank urban surfaces that exists in a city without appearing to belong to it. Now, rising 30 feet above Newcastle, it carries an emphatic new work by two internationally recognised North East artists, Jimmy Turrell and Peter Manning - better known as Prefab77.
The mural is bold, layered and impossible to overlook.
That's the idea. Public art can interrupt the ordinary journey through a city. It can give an overlooked place an identity, invite people to stop and reconsider their surroundings, and allow artists to leave something of themselves in the streets they know.
But this particular wall is also announcing something rather cool happening behind it.
In September, the refurbished building beside the mural will welcome the first students to LMA Newcastle: a new city-centre campus offering creative degrees across music, performance, music production, musical theatre, acting, dance, film and television production, and business.
The mural is the most immediately visible part of the story. The potentially transformative part lies inside.