REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND MARY McALEESE AT A LUNCHEON HOSTED BY THE MAYOR OF GATESHEAD
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND MARY McALEESE AT A LUNCHEON HOSTED BY THE MAYOR OF GATESHEAD WEDNESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER, 2003
I would like to thank Councillor David Lynn, Mayor of Gateshead for his hospitality and kind words of welcome. I have this morning visited several different venues in Gateshead and I was touched by the warmth of the welcome extended to me by everyone.
During my time on Tyneside, a recurring theme has been regeneration and especially the role of artistic projects in creating a new dynamic, forging a new imagination in the region. The tour of the information displays here has been fascinating and the remarkable photographs of the Angel of the North have been a real highlight. It is easy to see how and why The Angel has come to be such an important symbol, such a profound link, between Gateshead’s past and future.
Four centuries of mining shaped lives so utterly that the loss of that industry must have felt like an unending death. It took great courage and faith to face into a very different future and how better to symbolise Gateshead’s determination to pick itself up, to try a new direction, dream a new dream, than to build the largest angel sculpture in the world on the site of a pithead. The artist, Anthony Gormley, speaks movingly of the Angel as a celebration of the years of work that took place beneath its feet. With at least one person seeing it every second, it is also a supremely public piece of art and a demonstration of local investment lifting the heart and inspiring the imagination to a fresh imagination and new era of self-confidence for Gateshead.
I had a spectacular view of many aspects of Gateshead’s new artistic imagination from the top of the Baltic Gallery this morning! Now we sit in the shadow of the stunningly beautiful new Sage Gateshead Music Centre, its impressive mass sitting so gently on the landscape. I have just come from a visit to the Music Centre personnel’s current home, at the Old Gateshead Town Hall. I was impressed to see that so many of the projects in train there are to be of service to and directly involve the local community. And very much like the structure next door, I am sure that these projects, which are the lifeblood of the Music Centre, will become a beautiful and useful part of the every day landscape of Gateshead and the region.
It is said that in the eighteenth century, Gateshead was a village noted particularly for oak trees and windmills. Now Gateshead is known for international athletics and as a thriving centre for the arts and for design. From what I have been privileged to see of it this morning, in the twenty-first century Gateshead has surely come of age, with the endurance of the oak and energy of the elegant windmill. Leadership has, I am sure, been key to moving beyond the nostalgic past into a prosperous future. I congratulate each of you as city leaders for all you have inspired and accomplished and I wish you every success as you guide your community to the best possible future. Thank you for sharing so much with me today.