About
Well Newcastle Gateshead was a pathfinder of Well North, a Public Health England-funded initiative across 10 areas in the North of England to improve the health of the poorest people fastest and transform local communities into places where people can live, work and thrive.
Well North pathfinders adopted innovative and locally derived approaches. For Newcastle and Gateshead this included placing the voluntary and community sector at the heart of coordination and delivery, where project managing organisation, Blue Stone Collaborative, was ideally placed. The work was then overseen by a governing committee comprising Directors of Public Health from Newcastle City Council and Gateshead Council, along with the Blue Stone Board of Directors.
Whilst Well Newcastle Gateshead continued until July 2022, the central initiative concluded in 2019. You can view their final legacy report here. The final Well Newcastle Gateshead project evaluation is available on this website here in the evaluation section.
Above: Hand drawn infographic shows an overview of the Well Newcastle Gateshead funding several years into delivery, including the kind of projects and organisations funded, it’s benefits, beneficiaries.
Vision
Well Newcastle Gateshead worked with a range of partners, including arts organisations, schools, universities, voluntary sector organisations and elected representatives from the Newcastle and Gateshead local authorities. The founding vision was to:
Create: exploring the connection between health and the arts in the most challenged local communities.
Connect: working creatively with children 2-7 years old, their parents and grandparents to improve school readiness.
Aspire: looking at mental health, low self-esteem and social isolation in estates; connecting central cultural venues, local community arts organisations, place based voluntary organisations and local people to existing community assets in order to enhance cohesion, skills, employment opportunities and aspirations.
Meet the Team that Made Well Newcastle Gateshead Possible
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Well Newcastle Gateshead Programme Director
Mark Mulqueen was Programme Director for Well Newcastle Gateshead. Prior to this Mark was the Chief Executive of Room for You, which provides emotional support through creativity and listening to people living with life limiting, long term conditions.
Mark has also worked as a consultant and employee of a number of arts organisations and was Head of Performing Arts and Literature at the Arts Council, North East, where he created the first Clown Doctor programme in England to use creative play for therapeutic outcomes in hospitals in the region.
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Well Newcastle Gateshead Project Support Officer
Rachael has worked in the arts for many years, including community arts, arts development and arts & health. She has a wide range of experience and skills, including administration, finances, project management, communication and fundraising, gained from working in both small and large organisations in the public and voluntary sectors.
Rachael supported the Well Newcastle Gateshead Programme Director and Blue Stone Collaborative Board of Directors with all governance and administrative duties, including financial administration, project management, and marketing and communications activities.
"I joined Blue Stone Collaborative in 2017 as Programme Director for Well Newcastle Gateshead to lead an innovative, creative approach that addressed community public health in some of the most disadvantaged areas of Newcastle and Gateshead. The heart of the programme has been about finding and allowing people to grow by developing their creativity. Our support and funding has encouraged engagement and wellbeing with the allied aim of growing community assets and ensuring legacy benefits. Four years and 80 projects later you can read in this newsletter about some of the rich imaginative projects that have been made as a result of the Well Newcastle Gateshead initiative."
— Mark Mulqueen, Programme Director, Well Newcastle Gateshead (Blue Stone Collaborative)
(Image credit: North East Wilds, Plant and Food Parcels Project)
“Everything comes down to relationships and people. There are four things that matter to everyone: having a reason to get up in the morning, something meaningful to do, enough money to live on and sharing affection and friendship. Well North had the vision to realise this is what will help people to live longer in good health – and to put it into practice across ten communities.”
— Duncan Selbie, Chief Executive, Public Health England
(Image credit: Creativity Works, Ceramic Tiles)
"The thing about this grants program is that it had to be accessible to people who never applied for grants before. We had members of the community volunteering to help facilitate workshops (the main way of accessing the communities was through ‘Community Conversations’). The object of that was to get residents to talk about what it was that really agitated them, what they wanted to put right or what they they wanted to have some control over. Whatever that was we would try and find a creative or artistic solution to that issue."
— Mark Mulqueen, Programme Director, Well Newcastle Gateshead (Blue Stone Collaborative)
(Image credit: Ella DM Photography, Felling Celebration Event)
"Everyone was determined that this shouldn’t be a transactional grants programme with set dates and deadlines in which written applications were scored by a panel and funds were then awarded to those with the highest scores. Applications could be made at any time…what then ensued was often a lengthy dialogue about how the local community would be involved, how much match funding in cash or in kind had or could be secured (match funding was a condition of all awards) and what were the plans for evaluation and for longer term sustainability."
— Professor Chris Drinkwater CBE, FRCGP, FFPH (Hon) Vice-Chair & Blue Stone Lead for Well Newcastle Gateshead
(Image credit: Now We Know in Chopwell by Clive Davis)
