If you are out and about at @thelateshows tonight we suggest you get down to @d6culture to check out the stunning works on show here including @patrick_ziza pictured.
📣 ANNOUNCEMENT 📣
The @giftfest SCRATCH 'n' SOCIAL - DOUBLE BILL is now sold out!
There will be a handful of tickets available on the door for the second show, Scott Turnbull presents...How Did We Get Here? at St Mary's By The Tyne.
If you have bought a ticket for both showings but can no longer make it, please cancel your ticket or let us know so we can pass it on to someone else.
See you soon!
It's the last day of GIFT 2026 - what a weekend so far!
Come down today for some beautiful virtual reality, sing with the Mouthful Ensemble, drop in on Johnny The Biblical Rapper, enjoy some scran and later feast your eyes and ears on a double bill performance by local artists.
🔗 Find out more and book at the link in bio
Free to Roam with @patrick_ziza and Mwenza Blell at @giftfest offered space to consider who gets to move freely, who and by whom the world is built for, and how we find - or create - the third spaces where we can belong.
The workshop began with an invitation from Ziza and Mwenza to take our shoes off and put on one of the many mismatched pairs laid out. We then walked - often unevenly and clumsily - in these new shoes, pausing to ask each other questions.
This led to a conversation between Ziza and Mwenza. Ziza spoke about creating ‘third’ spaces through embodied performance where traditions and futures meet. Moving between lived experience, theory and creative practice, the conversation asked urgent questions about freedom, belonging and resistance - is it ever possible to truly be in someone else’s shoes? And what does it mean to be free within systems structured by deep asymmetries?
Thank you so much to Ziza and Mwenza for making visible what is so often unseen; to our amazing audience and their rich insightful questions. And to GIFT for this collaboration.
💫 Ziza will be continuing these explorations in an open studio at D6 for @thelateshows , in a durational performance, alongside work by @efuasutherland and @paul_stan_nataraj .
✨Sat 9 May, 6pm-10.30pm, D6, 5, Charlotte Square, NE1 4XF
Ziza is developing Free To Roam through Contested Desires residencies - including at the @museoegizio , Turin, Santiago’s @museodelamemoria and with D6 in Newcastle.
Contested Desires is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. In the UK, we are grateful for the support of @aceagrams , @heritagefunduk , @paulhamlynfoundation and @communityfoundationnortheast and @newcastlecouncil 's Culture Investment Fund.
Images: @vonfoxpromotions
#ContestedDesires #Gateshead #Newcastle #Tyneandwear #Colonialism #GiftFestival #ArtAndHeritage #DecolonialArt #CulturalDialogue #D6studio
Come and sing the Mouthful Way - craft words into music, make history into song, play with the resonance of voices and stone.
Led by Dave Camlin, Sharon Durant, Bex Mather and Katherine Zeserson - Mouthful’s four welcoming and expert vocal practitioners - this workshop explores themes of stone and sanctuary, of unwritten resonance and histories of belonging and home.
No need to read music - we’ll sing some songs by ear and we’ll invent the others as we go along. You’ll also hear a special performance from Mouthful Vocal Ensemble to round off the day.
📆 Sun 3 May
📍 St Mary's Heritage Centre
⏱ 1pm - 3.30pm
🎟 Pay What You Decide
🔗 Book at link in bio
Access considerations:
✅ Audience participation
All of our tickets are either free, Pay What You Decide or no booking required.
Tickets are going fast, but there are still some available for:
· TESTO (film screening) - Sat at 8pm
· AWAKE & STILL DROWNING - Sun at 10.30am
· Singing The Mouthful Way - Sun at 1pm
· SUNDAY SCRATCH 'n' SOCIAL - DOUBLE BILL - Sun at 7.30pm
Check out our website for more information and to book.
🔗 Link in bio
There is still time to book tickets for tonight's film screening of TESTO by Wet Mess.
In TESTO, Wet Mess wet messifies the messiness of life with teeth and one chin hair; exploring transitions, testosterone, the edges of drag, the blurry line between performance and reality, character and self, and the magical in the mundane.
“TESTO is genderpunk at its finest – it embodies so perfectly the feeling of seizing your autonomy.”
The Skinny
“Wet Mess shows are not only thrilling and wild, but also somehow sweet and life enhancing.”
The Guardian
📆 Sat 2 May
📍 Orbis Community
⏱ 8pm - 9pm
🎟 Pay What You Decide
🔗 Book tickets at the link in bio
Access considerations:
✅ Includes loud noise
✅ Audio described
We had such a good time last night seeing audiences get involved with A Citizens' Assembly!
This is a play for the people, by the people, created by acclaimed theatre maker Andy Smith, in collaboration with applied arts practitioner Lynsey O’Sullivan.
You can be part of the story TODAY at 12.30pm, and join the debate about the climate emergency.
‘Smith’s optimism is infectious’ – Total Theatre.
📆 TODAY (Sat 2 May)
⏱ 12.30pm - 1.40pm
📍 Gateshead Central Library
🎟 Pay What You Decide
🔗 Book at the link in bio
GIFT Day 2 is here!
Expect deep conversations, artist insights, virtual reality, drag make up workshop, film screening and of course some tasty scran.
🔗 Find out more and book tickets at the link in bio
See you soon.
Solos with Sourdough by Rosa Postlethwaite is about our lives with other-than-human species. It presents conversations between the performer and a portion of sourdough starter, with whom they lived for four years.
Contradictory, hipster and heartfelt, the “solos” represent the many ways that the performer is bound to their more-than-human community.
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Scott Turnbull presents - How did we get here? is an allegorical tale that combines fact and fiction, whilst exploring the relationship between two best friends & their very different lives.
Part parable, part fable – a late-night argument outside a kebab shop leads Scott on a fantastic and thought-provoking exploration of divisive, trans-Atlantic politics.
📆 Sun 3 May
📍 Vane (Rosa) St Mary's By The Tyne (Scott)
⏱ 7.30pm - 9pm
🎟 Pay What You Decide
🔗 Book at link in bio
Access considerations:
✅ Includes haze or smoke
✅ Includes total darkness
GIFT Festival 2026 is here! 💛
Come down and join us for VR mixed reality, artist discussions, space to whinge, experimental theatre, a play for the people and some tasty scran.
We look forward to seeing you.
🔗 Check out the full programme at the link in bio
For three hours, spoken word artist Johnny the Biblical Rapper opens his creative process.
Witness his struggles, navigate his thoughts, and participate in a practice he modestly calls “not that deep.”
Expect frustration, ink shortages, and fleeting brilliance—an immersive, chaotic, and ultimately humorous journey into poetry in the making.
📆 Sun 3 May
📍 Vane
⏱ 3pm - 6pm
🎟 FREE - No booking required
🔗 Book at link in bio
Access considerations:
✅ Audience participation
✅ Audience is required to walk or stand for long periods
✅ Relaxed performance
