#7 Deeper Into Outer Space | Cobalt Studios
Newcastle’s Cobalt Studios co-founder Kate Hodgkinson tells us how the space is flying the flag for community, culture and creativity in the north-east…
“Newcastle misses a massive trick as it is a brilliant city, yet our cultural economy is just not given the recognition it deserves,” says Newcastle’s Cobalt Studios’ Kate Hodgkinson.
Kate is discussing the prickly relations between creative organisations and the local authorities, something she considers to be one of the main reasons why the value of the region’s arts and nightlife isn’t recognised.
“We have this hen and stag do culture and the whole ‘Geordie Shore’ thing which people come for,” she explains. “Yet, If they knew where to look, they would find this whole thriving underground of DIY spaces and community places.”
This lack of support and focus for creativity is a familiar story across many parts of the UK. It’s one I covered extensively in my book, ‘Out of Space: How UK Cities Shaped Rave Culture’ and on this blog - and begs the question of what needs to change to turn the page on this narrative.
As co-captain of Cobalt Studios, alongside business partner Mark Collett, Kate is at the coal face of culture in the north-east. They are both incredibly busy and driven to build something that will stand the test of time on few resources other than their own energies. She says:
“We have done everything here ourselves. It’s our life’s work, a labour of love, built from the ground upwards. We’ve done it because we want to make a sacred space for creativity and culture that exists long after us.”
Cobalt’s Genesis
Kate moved to Newcastle to study and started Cobalt as an artist studio for her work creating glassware.
Needing space to operate, she joined forces with Mark and two other creatives to launch a collective in a bid to find a base for their efforts.
“At the time, the Baltic Art Gallery was in progress and Newcastle was competing for the City of Culture title, so back then there was interest in how culture could impact communities,” she states. “The council actually found this building, we moved into it with the intention of providing a small amount of artist studios - and the project grew from there.”
The building next door to the original space came up for rent and the Cobalt team decided to take it on to increase the scope of the studios. Music events were also held although these went off under the radar with mattresses over the windows to prevent the sound from spilling outside. After two of the original four directors split from the project, it left Kate and Mark to continue and evolve the space into what it has now become.
“I worked out that I didn’t want to bring expensive items into the world for an elitist arts market,” says Kate. "Instead, I started working as a community artist as I was really interested in people and places and how you can use creativity to make cities better.”
Culture and Place Making
Gentrification is a familiar and common trend in today’s urban spaces.
Artists move into a part of a town or city where space is cheap, make it cool, developers get wind, start building and suddenly property prices rocket. When Cobalt first opened its doors, they were surrounded by derelict land. As the artists slowly filled in these cracks in the city’s landscape with colour and life, developers began to move in.
“For about three years, we had permanent drilling going on around us,” says Kate. “If you look at Cobalt on Google Earth, you can see the extent of the accommodation that went up around us in a very short space of time. I objected to a lot of it as it paid no credence to the local community and didn’t offer any discernible value.”
While development certainly took place, the blocks that were constructed around Cobalt have been for students - which Kate believes ultimately worked in their favour as opposed to homeowners. Still, a noise complaint led to Cobalt’s first iteration being forced to close its doors. While the venue was shut, they launched a crowdfunder and successfully raised enough money to enhance and extend the space.
“We ripped out this first iteration of the venue, then rebuilt with soundproofing, we also put a kitchen in and ramped up what we could offer,” says Kate. “We included a stage and came out the other side with a bank loan to pay off. We were like'; ‘shit, we’ve built a venue now'.’ When we finished, we realised we had to figure out how to run it.”
Community and Diversity
At the heart of Cobalt is the community, an audience that the space has worked hard to nurture. A calendar has been introduced with events held over three seasons of the year, taking place over six days of the week.
From the immersive events of Learn and Do to their Fresh gigs and club events, great thought is put into ensuring there is a wide appeal.
“The diversity of our events is one of the key ways we work with our community,” says Kate. “We’re very keen to avoid doing just one type of thing.”
“The last thing I want to see is only white, Guardian-reading people accessing our events. I am that person - none of us choose how we are born or brought up - but I can choose to acknowledge and reach out to different areas of the community who find it harder to access what we provide.”
Kate and Mark are directors, although there is no committee in place at the top of Cobalt. Instead, a DIY ethos surrounds the space’s activity with future plans to increase governance. If these are to be enacted, they need to generate tangible benefits to operations rather than simply creating more work.
“We’re planning on launching an invited panel of stakeholders and have an inbox of people who want to volunteer and that’s a way to grow our community too,” says Kate.
“We don’t have the time to delegate to volunteers - we probably need a volunteer coordinator - and we don’t have straightforward jobs which we can assign. If we are to be accountable to a wider group of people, we need the time to lay this down in a way that really works.”
Club Nights
Neither Mark or Kate take a salary from Cobalt - instead they have day jobs, where they run a cafe called Ernest and an ethical shop which stocks locally made products. During lockdown there were ambitions to try and make the project more sustainable and a new co-working space has recently opened.
Still the club nights are the main profit making arm of the operation. Initially, Kate managed these before offering opportunities to external promoters. But a lack of diversity both in sound and in those wanting to host events caused a rethink. Much of the live music now revolves around Kate’s esoteric tastes and the club nights are programmed in-house.
“We’ve wrangled these club events back off external promoters,” says Kate. “Which caused a bit of alienation. If I set up another place, it would be called ‘Yours’ and I’d let promoters and DJs do their thing.”
“We only have 36 club nights a year so it came to a point where we couldn’t afford to give them away. There was too much techno and dystopian breaks - we wanted to hear a bit more joy on the dancefloor.”
Manchester’s Luke Una is one of the DJs to recently pass through the space and was evangelical about his experiences at Cobalt, labelling it “one of the greatest clubs and spaces in Europe at the moment”.
His recent tour to promote the second edition of his ‘E Soul Cultura’ compilation has seen him travel to a variety of exciting crevices of UK ‘clubland’ - the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham, The Golden Lion in Todmorden and Faith in Strangers in Margate are all united by a huge amount of passion and love for intimate dancefloors and DIY spaces.
“I feel like we’re part of a network,” says Kate. “People will make recommendations or we hear about DJs we want to book who we think will work here. Increasingly, we’re trying to circumnavigate agents who don’t get these types of spaces. We’re 220 cap, a grand is our max budget, and the first thing they ask is about ticket price. It means we need to find DJs that we can work with so we try really hard to see who runs great parties in Manchester, Glasgow, - for e.g. we’ve just booked Bonzai Bonner who runs a great queer party there.”
Cobalt’s Future
So what does the future hold for the space?
Well, ever since the venue has been open, Kate has been on a mission to collect data around Cobalt’s programming, work and events. This is what Kate sees as “ammunition” when she has to justify what Cobalt does and how it does it. It’s part of a wider ambition to embed themselves deeply into the community around them.
“I’m very careful about how we operate and try to quantify everything with data,” says Kate. “Average ticket costs, how many free spaces have been given away, how many volunteers were involved, how many staff have we paid - so I can reduce everything to numbers if I need to.”
This aim to be truly transparent is key part of the venture. Honesty, integrity and an urge to do more to enhance the world’s of those in Cobalt’s orbit also drives the project forward. Despite everything achieved to date, Kate believes there’s still more work to be undertaken.
“It’s not enough as it is,” she states. “ I want to go more into the community, Newcastle is high on the deprivation index, I passionately believe music is a gift for everyone - as it is so instant and transformative, there is a huge demographic in Newcastle who won’t be comfortable coming into our space without us going to see them first and inviting them in. We need to do more.”
Visit cobaltstudios.co.uk for more.