We’re delighted to share that Queen’s Hall has secured funding from Arts Council England’s Creative Foundations Fund. This vital support will allow us to carry out urgent roof repairs alongside key upgrades to our lighting and PA systems—helping us continue to deliver high‑quality performances and events for our community across the Tyne Valley and beyond.
Our Lead Technician, Scoon Ferguson, who has been part of the Queen’s Hall team for over 20 years, shares what this investment means for him and his backstage colleagues:
"It was about twenty years ago when a local dance school were performing their annual end-of-term show on the Queens Hall stage, and our lighting control desk decided to die, plunging the stage into darkness, but I still remember it quite vividly. Watching a stressed sparkie frantically wiring some portable dimmers we happened to have lying around into a high-amp feed, whilst surrounded by dozens of impatient children and hundreds of even more impatient parents, is one of the more ordinary memories I have of the early years, but it stands out for another reason. It was the final nail in the coffin for our 1990s lighting desk.
And so we find ourselves at another turning point, with the 2000s desk now on its last legs, and the opportunity not only to upgrade, but to take advantage of the newer technology modern control surfaces offer. In the olden days - not quite as far back as the burning lime days, but still a while ago - most lights just got darker or brighter, meaning you just needed one signal to control it. Modern fixtures do so much more than simply dimming - in fact some models require hundreds of control parameters for a single lantern. Our 2000s desk has 1024, a number which seemed plenty all those years ago, but which nowadays could be eaten up by half-a-dozen hybrid movers. A new lighting desk will allow us to use these new high signal channel units, alongside our legacy lighting rig.
Speaking of the rig, we're also hoping to continue our journey towards minimising the use of what we call conventionals - fixtures which still use incandescent lamps, which have a habit of regularly landing us with wince-inducing electricity bills. LED technology has improved over the years (hence it not being an overnight thing), to the point where even I can't tell the difference - and I'm a lighting nerd who refers to colours as numbers. The upgrade to our FOH rig, something which is used for nearly every performance (it's where we rig facelights, spotlights etc), will reduce those bills by about fifty percent. Not bad, considering we still need to maintain a fairly hefty number of lumens on stage!
Additionally, we have plans to upgrade the sound system, speeding up fit-up times and improving the audio quality in the main house even further than we've been pushing it recently. And I haven't even mentioned the leaky roof! After sealing the fly-tower above the stage last summer, the idea is to tackle the rest of the building in the near future. All in all, this grant will make it possible for some exciting improvements and major behind-the-scenes upgrades throughout the theatre and arts centre. The backstage team are all very much looking forward to it. We hope you are too."