Colour, culture and community
The arts are bursting forth in a village by the sea. David Whetstone meets the couple making it happen
If one thing unites the residents of Unity Terrace in Cambois, then it must be a love of colour.
This surprising terrace, separated only by a railway line and some grassy dunes from the crashing waves of the North Sea, is defiantly rainbow-hued, like a Northumberland outpost of Balamory, the children’s TV programme.
According to Esther Huss and Alex Oates, respectively dancer and playwright, it’s all the work of a chap called Paul in nearby North Blyth, where they live, who will transform the front of your house in a jiffy if you hand him the colour of your choice.
“He was asked to paint one of them and it created a ripple effect,” says Esther. “Other people said, ‘I want a nice bright colour too’.”
“He’s also a really good artist,” adds Alex.
Half way along this psychedelic strip is Cambois Miners Welfare Institute which rather lets the side down in its resolute greyness.
A dentist has the ground floor but upstairs in what they call The Tute is where Esther and Alex – joined today by energetic son Cosmo to assist with the interview – are endeavouring to embed arts in the community.
Read more: Curated Culture 01.10.24 - our what’s on recommendations
Their Rude Health festival of theatre, dance and music, bringing some significant names to the village, follows on the heels of Cambois Hidden Depths, a September weekend showcasing local talent.
Rude Health runs throughout October with each week given a different designation: Mental Health followed by Ageing & Isolation; then Women, Health & Equality; and finally Planetary Health.
Tim Dalling, loved for his anarchic approach to music making, will front a concert tonight (October 4) called As I Sing And Breathe.
He will be joined by his ‘heroine’, Maggie Nicols, the Scottish vocalist and dancer, and friends Francine Luce and Jeremy Bradfield.
On Saturday afternoon (October 5) a Dalling-inspired ‘musical boxing’ training session will precede an evening performance which will be a first for Cambois and possibly the whole North East.
Musical Boxing will see music improvisers ‘face off’ in knock-out bouts in an actual boxing ring in front of an audience but with no punches thrown.
The highlight of week two will be Krapp’s Last Tape, the Samuel Beckett play, performed by actor Trevor Fox (not long back from Stratford and the Royal Shakespeare Company) and directed by Andy Berriman.
Week three will bring Jacky Lansley, the influential choreographer and dancer (once of the Royal Ballet), back to the village where she and Esther will lead a workshop and perform new work together.
Week four promises a family friendly performance by Miscreations Theatre about the loss of the Sycamore Gap tree and a sound installation made by students of Bedlington Academy with composer Jeremy Bradfield and writer Hilary Elder.
It will all help to breathe new life into this building, erected in 1929 but empty for 15 years before the current owner bought it from the council a few years ago and agreed to rent the upper floor to Alex and Esther.
How they come to be here is a story as colourful as Unity Terrace.
Esther grew up in Germany where dance found her rather than the other way round.
“I didn’t want to dance but my mum was friendly with an ex-soloist from the Royal Ballet who had opened a ballet school in our village. She didn’t have anyone to go so my mum said, ‘You’ve got to go’.
“We made a deal that I’d go four times and then never go back. But I fell in love with it.”
The same dance teacher urged her, at the age of 17, to further her classical training in England. Once here, though, she discovered contemporary dance… “and everything made sense. This became my physical home.”
She and Alex met in London where he was working as carer to a boy with learning difficulties. The boy’s mother then employed Esther to conduct weekly movement sessions.
“This mother was quite controlling so we weren’t allowed to speak to each other,” recalls Esther.
“Then one day she took everyone out and we sat next to each other, exchanged a few sentences and realised there was common ground.”
Alex, originally from Whitley Bay, studied theatre arts at Middlesex University and after graduating wrote for EastEnders before realising his passion was theatre.
His plays include Silk Road (2014), Pig (2015) and All In A Row (2017). Currently he is attached to the Royal National Theatre and working on a play commemorating the late playwright Peter Shaffer which is likely to be staged eventually at Northern Stage.
The couple fell in love and looked for somewhere affordable to live. Success in the arts, especially for freelancers, is no guarantee of financial security.
In the end they settled on North Blyth, a wild and dramatic place Alex remembers discovering “by accident” when he was young.
“My mum was a community nurse and had patients in this area. She said, ‘You’ll never believe this place’.
“It is like an island. You’ve got the sea on one side and the river on the other. It’s so strange, but beautiful. We fell in love with it.”
In 2019 they bought their house that would take them a year to do up. “We had only a cold water tap, no heating, no anything really,” recalls Esther.
“We got married the same year in the social club. I arrived on a fishing boat at the staithes.”
No tip-toeing quietly in for them, then…
Alex recalls: “It was quite a shock for the community because they’re very tight-knit and we were sort of new in the area and suddenly we had 200 people from London and Germany coming (Jacky Lansley among them).
“For our first dance we had this big, choreographed dance which we’d practiced on the beach and loads of people from North Blyth came and watched.”
For those spectators it was a taste of things to come.
Esther was planning to stage a dance performance with a huge set and needed somewhere to store it. On the local grapevine they heard about the old Miners’ Institute.
Undoubtedly it has seen better days. The council, commendably deciding against demolition, shored it up with an internal metal frame and gratefully handed responsibility to its new owner.
Read more: Gerry & Sewell and Newcastle Theatre Royal
We got in touch with him during Covid and asked if we could have a look,” remembers Alex.
“As soon as we saw the wooden floors and stained glass windows, we knew we wanted it.”
It does have charm. There are views across the railway line to the sea and old signs on the doors are quaintly worded. Behind one is – or was - a Ladies’ Ante Room. The internal paintwork, flaking in places, is at least jolly.
Its biggest plus point, though, is the big hall with a stage at one end.
Locals with long memories were delighted to be invited back inside. One man, says Esther, swore he could smell the vegetable shows that used to happen there. Others recalled tea dances.
Regular events now at The Tute are a creative playgroup for children, a dance class run by Esther and a writing group. Then there are the special events like Rude Health, bringing top artists to Cambois in the interests of wellbeing.
"It's a natural human desire to be healthy so it's relatable as a theme," argues Esther. "It felt like a useful starting point."
The couple are committed to the local community and wasted no time in striving to win its trust. Their daughter, Dahlia, has started at the primary school along the road and the reopening of the building after so much time has been welcomed.
A local resident became a member of the board and charitable status was achieved in January, a "massive turnaround for us," says Esther.
Alex adds: "We'd been doing everything up to that point pretty much unpaid, thinking if we could ever become a charity maybe we could pay ourselves a couple of days a week."
An introductory performance of Esther's ambitious dance piece drew people into The Tute and the response, say the couple, was extraordinary.
"I think that was when people could sense our sincerity," says Esther. "It was free entry (as are the events in Rude Health, funded with levelling up money from the North East Combined Authority). We're not here to profit out of the community or bring London to Cambois.
"It's just that we care about the arts, we believe that culture can create change for communities and we're here to share what we can do. This is our skillset and it's all that we can bring."
The couple are spurred by a community survey they carried out with responses including feeling forgotten, ignored and left behind.
High unemployment in the area might be alleviated by the huge data centre destined for the 235-acre empty site nearby. But Alex says the number of jobs created is unlikely to come close to the 3,000 promised by the site's previous owners whose plan to produce electric car batteries came to nothing.
It's hard to imagine, though, that people who live in those colourful houses are terminally in the doldrums or immune to the benefits the arts might bring.
Alex and Esther are committed to forging ahead with their plans for the community and with projects of their own.
Alex has his National Theatre attachment while Esther is working on a commission for the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (she did one previously, a performance in a lead mine near Nenthead with a visual artist and a sound artist).
She is also involved, as the movement specialist, in a Newcastle University research project looking at coastal communities and seaweed, although it hinges on the outcome of a funding bid.
If it comes off, at least Esther won't have to go far to find source material. In this strange and dramatic North East outpost, those breakers on the shore deliver it daily.
To find out more, go to The Tute website.