By Caroline Oswald
I meet up with Carol Alevroyianni and Richard Broderick (Brod) in Carol’s kitchen. Every surface is strewn with memorabilia from the North Shields Fish Quay Festival, the major annual music and arts event that the pair worked together on for well over a decade. Talking to Carol and Brod about how they helped shape the festival from humble beginnings into such a large-scale operation, I realise the lasting impact of this significant cultural celebration.
In 1986, Carol was working for North Tyneside Council as arts officer with Principal Arts Officer, Tim Archer: “We were a tiny team based in the Buddle Arts Centre. The Fishermen’s Association approached us as they wanted to have a party in the fish sheds to coincide with the Tall Ships Race that year. They intended to invite people from the town as well as the fishing community.” Brod interjects: “Bear in mind the Fish Quay was not like it is today. Those sheds were falling down. There was no fishmonger. You had to buy fish by the stone!” Nevertheless, Carol went along to meet Norrie Morse, fisherman and boat owner and John Carter, of Caley Fisheries. In the end it was too late to organise anything for that year but the idea was sparked. Tim saw the opportunity to create something special up North celebrating the fishing community alongside Covent Garden-style street theatre and live music. At the time, economic development money was available for areas of industrial decline. North Shields definitely fit this description and Tim secured money from the Urban Regeneration Fund (URF) to hold the first Fish Quay Festival in 1987.
The annual Fishermen’s Regatta was a lost tradition, with decorated boats going up the river to Newcastle for a day out. Tim wanted to bring that back and talked the Fishermen’s Mission into moving the ‘Blessing of the Fleet’ to the festival date too. The late May Bank Holiday was chosen for the best chance of decent weather and to get the schools on board (Brod points out they disregarded the fact that the Fish Quay had been under water at this time of year on more than one occasion, before the wave trap was built in the 1990s). Tim wanted to involve the local community as well as the fishing industry. He needed a bigger team of people to make the festival happen and recruited Freeform Arts (later Northern Freeform), led by Martin Goodrich. Martin appealed for local artists who wanted to work. Brod was put in touch with Freeform by fellow artist, Sally Brown. Martin asked “Can you make stuff?” to which Brod replied, “Aye, a bit.” Martin confirmed: “Okay, you’re in. Do you know anyone else?” Since the pay was a bit better than the dole, Brod agreed, bringing in friends, Graham Robinson and Pete Curran. They were joined by secret weapon, Boris Howarth, of Welfare State International, a vibrant collective of artists producing large-scale events and celebrations. “I was learning at the knee of a master,” Brod reminisces. “He knew how to get people involved in a carnival. I don’t know where we would have been without him.” Freeform were all about using an artistic approach to change environments within communities, involving local people in transforming their surroundings by redesigning environments such as gardens and school playgrounds.
The idea behind the 1987 Fish Quay Festival was simple: the fishing fleet, exhibitions, street theatre, music and food. “The first year we had Ray Stubbs on the jazz stage by the ferry landing,” Carol remembers. Brod disagrees. “No, it was on the Western Quay!” Memory is a funny thing, and other disagreements about the finer points of the festival often come up. Carol insists: “We only had a jazz stage in the first year, but it was too far away. The main stage was on the Western Quay.” Carol’s dad, Norman Brown, a keen amateur jazz musician, suggested artists for the jazz stage but sadly died before the first festival took place. The headline act that year was the world music collective, Grand Union Orchestra. An exhibition was held in the fish sheds where the fishermen had wanted their party the previous year. The walls were lined with marine ply to display work by local artists such as Ivan Lindsay. Amber Films distributed a folder of photos documenting the fishing industry for all the fish shops to display. The Seafish authority ran cookery demonstrations. There was a huge display of wet fish and interactive sessions on rope making, net mending and stalls selling keepsakes made from materials from broken-up ships. “The quality of stuff on sale that first year was the best!” Carol proclaims. As a former journalist married to acclaimed press photographer John Alevroyiannis, Carol wanted to make the 1987 Fish Quay Festival front-page news. The Sunday Sun said they would put it on their front page if 150,000 people turned up on the Saturday and if she could get the mayor to dance at the front of the parade! Both of these things occurred and the Fish Quay Festival made the headlines.
After a fantastic firework display on Saturday night, Sunday morning was for the ‘Blessing of the Fleet’. Freeform had set up above the post office on Saville street where they worked on the street pageant and site decorations and supported the fishermen and their wives to decorate the boats for a parade up the river. Brod recalls: “We also had a children’s arena full of workshops and activities and held ‘It’s A Knockout’ style competitions such as the ‘Fish O’limpets’. We sprayed a large stretch of polythene with oil and fairy liquid across the Western Quay and had hose pipes connected to the fire hydrants. There were daft races- people put fish down their trousers. It was in the days before health and safety and it could get dangerous!” Carol was exhausted after the first festival was over. As well as the organisation, the small team had to do much of the physical setting-up themselves. It was only later that she realised the reason for her tiredness was that she had been pregnant with her son!
After the success of the first weekend festival, from the following year it ran across the Saturday, Sunday and Monday of the bank holiday weekend. The Fish Quay Festival became bigger and better, thanks to investment from businesses with generous advertising budgets: “Siemens gave us £20,000 the year they opened on Silverlink!” Carol recalls. Other significant sponsors were British Gas, Northern Electric, Guinness and Northern Rock Foundation. “Most of the money came from sponsorship and trade on the site with a core budget from the council.” It soon became Europe’s biggest free festival, with up to 600,000 people attending over three days.
Freeform Arts shaped the look and feel of the whole event each year, creating unique stage decorations and memorable pageants featuring imaginative creations such as gigantic figureheads and a huge swan made from the old printing plates from the Chronicle and Journal newspapers. They worked with many local schools. When I share my memories of Freeform coming into my school in 1987 to help us make octopus costumes and teach us a special song and dance, Brod states that this was in fact the following year: “Show me a parade and I’ll tell you the year! 1989 was the best year for the boat decoration and parades. We made figureheads for all the boats. One had a theme inspired by the film South Pacific with a volcano around the funnel. It caught fire!” The Mortal Orchestra was a particularly striking group of Catalonian style ‘gigantes’ made by Brod and Graham: “Pax Nindi from the Arts Council came to see us. We ended up going on tour!” They also had a visit from Chair of the Arts Council, Sandy Nairn, who ended up running the National Gallery: “He was meant to be picked up by my friend’s boat so we could show him the fishscape from afar. But the boat was stuck with my friend out on the river – it had broken down! We just took him to the Prince of Wales for a pint instead.” Freeform’s fishscape art installation, completed in 1988, still stands on the bankside today.
Carol regularly went to the Womex music expo and European street festivals to find artists who might tour and to arrange partnerships with other festivals. For many musicians it was a gateway to a European tour: “We collaborated to book world music bands from Europe, Africa and South America. Lubi Jovanovic, a promoter and DJ, was promoting some of the great Latin American bands and helped us bring Grupo Kilmax to North Shields, among many others.” Kenny Murray, founding director of Liverpool’s Africa Oye festival, helped bring artists such as Papa Wemba and Cheik Lo, and the list goes on. Legends including The Wailers, Desmond Decker and Gino Washington came to North Shields. Carol considers the ‘Window on the World’ Fish Quay Festival in 2000 to have been the best for music. The programme shows a map and listings for all the stages: the Orange World Stage, Celtic Dance Stage, Dolphin Stage, Jumpin’ Hot Club Stage, Galaxy Radio Stage and the Street Theatre Arena. Artists included Toto La Momposina, The Popes, Asian Dub Foundation, Yat Kha and Nitin Sawhney, with the performance broadcast live to the nation as part of the BBC Music Live festival. Young drummers including Percussion Posse, DrumDin’s youth band, took part in a national mass drumming performance next to The Wooden Doll pub (now How Do You Do). For the festival finale, the Backbeat Beatles joined in a national live rendition of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ with the BBC. I personally remember seeing bands such as the Levellers and Aswad among many others. One year I rushed to the Jumpin’ Hot Club tent to see Blue Rodeo, who I knew filled stadiums in Canada. That same year I surprised my Canadian friend on a visit over there by taking her a fish and chip wrapper signed by all the members.
The weather did not usually cause any problems – the torrential rain actually added to the atmosphere of Asian Dub Foundation’s set and one year the Royal Northern Sinfonia orchestra had to be swiftly relocated to the fish sheds when the heavens opened! In 1999 Carol had to cut Bob Geldof’s performance short in case the steel deck stage went live because it had become so wet with the rain bleaching in. In 2001, I remember getting sunstroke as I waited hours with my friend and her daughter for the manufactured pop band Hear’say to appear. “There was road congestion for miles,” remembers Carol. “People were flooding down the bankside. I saw faces pressed up against the mesh fences.” This moment was probably the beginning of the end for Carol: “I didn’t really agree with bringing the pop acts in.” Brod saw the writing on the wall when the decommissioning scheme for the fishing boats started: “There was horrific tension. We couldn’t talk to the people about decorating their boats if they didn’t know whether they would still be here. They were asked to destroy their own boats. Beautiful, wooden boats. You can forgive them for becoming resentful.” Then the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation began the regeneration of the Fish Quay. “The fishermen could see it wasn’t about them. Unless you had a big boat, you were stuffed.”
Carol worked on the Fish Quay Festival up until 2002, after which it became a smaller-scale, more family oriented event. It ended completely in 2006 due to budget cuts by the council. The effect of what was achieved over that period of time should not be underestimated: “If you bring artists into a place, money follows. It was a great time for the arts in North Shields.” The creative spirit established by the Fish Quay Festival has not left the town, which maintains a rich and vibrant cultural scene. Many members of the youth bands involved in the Fish Quay Festival went on to develop careers as professional musicians. “They saw that being a pop star was not the only option.” Carol’s own children have undoubtedly benefited from growing up backstage. Her eldest son works on band tours after years working with stage tech companies. Her youngest, at the age of six, was taught how to stilt walk by festival performers. He spent his 18th birthday stilt-walking in Beijing and has a successful career as a professional musician performing at the Royal Albert Hall and touring with bands like the Baghdaddies. “I remember him being strapped to me and sleeping through the Saturday night fireworks as a tiny baby in ‘88.”
Carol maintains that the Fish Quay Festival is one of the things of which she is most proud: “As Artistic Director for all but two years between 1987 and 2002, I was privileged to be able to bring amazing artists to the area.” The festival enabled lasting creative partnerships that are still benefiting the local area today. At the time of writing, Carol and Brod were in the midst of organising the 2025 Whitley Bay Carnival: “We wanted to create something similar to the Fish Quay Festival. We deliberately chose the same date, the late May bank holiday.” In recent years the Carnival has welcomed many of the musicians and street performers who delighted North Shields festival goers. DrumDin community samba band are regulars. Brazilian musical director, Mestre Memeu of Olodum, who recorded with Paul Simon, performed in 2024. Even Freeform Fish Quay favourite, The Mortal Orchestra, have made an appearance: “We thought it would be their final outing, but we’ve taken them to Spain and all over since then!” Brod explains. Carol recalls when she was small: “Every village had a carnival or gala. That’s what we’ve modelled the carnival on.” As we speak, she receives a phone call from one of Whitley Bay’s mosques. Carol and Brod are delighted to receive confirmation that they will be participating in the carnival for the very first time this year. It is wonderful to witness the creative duo’s enthusiasm for bringing something unique to their community year after year. However long they continue to do so, there is no denying the legacy of what they have achieved by, as Carol puts it, “just getting together and doing something”.
The Whitley Bay Carnival is a colourful family festival to be held from the 23rd to the 25th of May this year. There is a ticketed opening event on Friday and on Saturday a parade will start at 11am from Whitley Bay metro station down to the Spanish City Plaza and Links. There is a ticketed Carnival Ball for all ages on Saturday evening. On Sunday there will be live music and street theatre from 10am, as well as the exciting sports event, the Heritage Games and a mini car show. The Carnival Finale is at 4:30pm. Find out more at: http://whitleybaycarnival.co.uk
to the festival date too. The late May Bank Holiday was chosen for the best chance of decent weather and to get the schools on board (Brod points out they disregarded the fact that the Fish Quay had been under water at this time of year on more than one occasion, before the wave trap was built in the 1990s). Tim wanted to involve the local community as well as the fishing industry. He needed a bigger team of people to make the festival happen and recruited Freeform Arts (later Northern Freeform), led by Martin Goodrich. Martin appealed for local artists who wanted to work. Brod was put in touch with Freeform by fellow artist, Sally Brown.
Martin asked “Can you make stuff?” to which Brod replied, “Aye, a bit.”
Martin confirmed: “Okay, you’re in. Do you know anyone else?” Since the pay was a bit better than the dole, Brod agreed, bringing in friends, Graham Robinson and Pete Curran. They were joined by secret weapon, Boris Howarth, of Welfare State International, a vibrant collective of artists producing large-scale events and celebrations. “I was learning at the knee of a master,” Brod reminisces. “He knew how to get people involved in a carnival. I don’t know where we would have been without him.” Freeform were all about using an artistic approach to change environments within communities, involving local people in transforming their surroundings by redesigning environments such as gardens and school playgrounds.
The idea behind the 1987 Fish Quay Festival was simple: the fishing fleet, exhibitions, street theatre, music and food. “The first year we had Ray Stubbs on the jazz stage by the ferry landing,” Carol remembers. Brod disagrees. “No, it was on the Western Quay!” Memory is a funny thing, and other disagreements about the finer points of the festival often come up.
Carol insists: “We only had a jazz stage in the first year, but it was too far away. The main stage was on the Western Quay.” Carol’s dad, Norman Brown, a keen amateur jazz musician, suggested artists for the jazz stage but sadly died before the first festival took place. The headline act that year was the world music collective, Grand Union Orchestra. An exhibition was held in the fish sheds where the fishermen had wanted their party the previous year. The walls were lined with marine ply to display work by local artists such as Ivan Lindsay. Amber Films distributed a folder of photos documenting the fishing industry for all the fish shops to display. The Seafish authority ran cookery demonstrations. There was a huge display of wet fish and interactive sessions on rope making, net mending and stalls selling keepsakes made from materials from broken-up ships. “The quality of stuff on sale that first year was the best!” Carol proclaims. As a former journalist married to acclaimed press photographer John Alevroyiannis, Carol wanted to make the 1987 Fish Quay Festival front-page news. The Sunday Sun said they would put it on their front page if 150,000 people turned up on the Saturday and if she could get the mayor to dance at the front of the parade! Both of these things occurred and the Fish Quay Festival made the headlines.
After a fantastic firework display on Saturday night, Sunday morning was for the ‘Blessing of the Fleet’. Freeform had set up above the post office on Saville street where they worked on the street pageant and site decorations and supported the fishermen and their wives to decorate the boats for a parade up the river. Brod recalls: “We also had a children’s arena full of workshops and activities and held ‘It’s A Knockout’ style competitions such as the ‘Fish O’limpets’. We sprayed a large stretch of polythene with oil and fairy liquid across the Western Quay and had hose pipes connected to the fire hydrants. There were daft races- people put fish down their trousers. It was in the days before health and safety and it could get dangerous!” Carol was exhausted after the first festival was over. As well as the organisation, the small team had to do much of the physical setting-up themselves. It was only later that she realised the reason for her tiredness was that she had been pregnant with her son!
After the success of the first weekend festival, from the following year it ran across the Saturday, Sunday and Monday of the bank holiday weekend. The Fish Quay Festival became bigger and better, thanks to investment from businesses with generous advertising budgets: “Siemens gave us £20,000 the year they opened on Silverlink!” Carol recalls. Other significant sponsors were British Gas, Northern Electric, Guinness and Northern Rock Foundation. “Most of the money came from sponsorship and trade on the site with a core budget from the council.” It soon became Europe’s biggest free festival, with up to 600,000 people attending over three days.
Freeform Arts shaped the look and feel of the whole event each year, creating unique stage decorations and memorable pageants featuring imaginative creations such as gigantic figureheads and a huge swan made from the old printing plates from the Chronicle and Journal newspapers.
They worked with many local schools. When I share my memories of Freeform coming into my school in 1987 to help us make octopus costumes and teach us a special song and dance, Brod states that this was in fact the following year: “Show me a parade and I’ll tell you the year! 1989 was the best year for the boat decoration and parades. We made figureheads for all the boats. One had a theme inspired by the film South Pacific with a volcano around the funnel. It caught fire!” The Mortal Orchestra was a particularly striking group of Catalonian style ‘gigantes’ made by Brod and Graham: “Pax Nindi from the Arts Council came to see us. We ended up going on tour!” They also had a visit from Chair of the Arts Council, Sandy Nairn, who ended up running the National Gallery: “He was meant to be picked up by my friend’s boat so we could show him the fishscape from afar. But the boat was stuck with my friend out on the river – it had broken down! We just took him to the Prince of Wales for a pint instead.” Freeform’s fishscape art installation, completed in 1988, still stands on the bankside today.
Carol regularly went to the Womex music expo and European street festivals to find artists who might tour and to arrange partnerships with
other festivals. For many musicians it was a gateway to a European tour: “We collaborated to book world music bands from Europe, Africa and South America. Lubi Jovanovic, a promoter and DJ, was promoting some of the great Latin American bands and helped us bring Grupo Kilmax to North Shields, among many others.”
Kenny Murray, founding director of Liverpool’s Africa Oye festival, helped bring artists such as Papa Wemba and Cheik Lo, and the list goes on. Legends including The Wailers, Desmond Decker and Gino Washington came to North Shields. Carol considers the ‘Window on the World’ Fish Quay Festival in 2000 to have been the best for music. The programme shows a map and listings for all the stages: the Orange World Stage, Celtic Dance Stage, Dolphin Stage, Jumpin’ Hot Club Stage, Galaxy Radio Stage and the Street Theatre Arena. Artists included Toto La Momposina, The Popes, Asian Dub Foundation, Yat Kha and Nitin Sawhney, with the performance broadcast live to the nation as part of the BBC Music Live festival. Young drummers including Percussion Posse, DrumDin’s youth band, took part in a national mass drumming performance next to The Wooden Doll pub (now How Do You Do). For the festival finale, the Backbeat Beatles joined in a national live rendition of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ with the BBC. I personally remember seeing bands such as the Levellers and Aswad among many others. One year I rushed to the Jumpin’ Hot Club tent to see Blue Rodeo, who I knew filled stadiums in Canada. That same year I surprised my Canadian friend on a visit over there by taking her a fish and chip wrapper signed by all the members.
The weather did not usually cause any problems – the torrential rain actually added to the atmosphere of Asian Dub Foundation’s set and one year the Royal Northern Sinfonia orchestra had to be swiftly relocated to the fish sheds when the heavens opened! In 1999 Carol had to cut Bob
Geldof’s performance short in case the steel deck stage went live because it had become so wet with the rain bleaching in. In 2001, I remember getting sunstroke as I waited hours with my friend and her daughter for the manufactured pop band Hear’say to appear. “There was road congestion for miles,” remembers Carol. “People were flooding down the bankside. I saw faces pressed up against the mesh fences.” This moment was probably the beginning of the end for Carol: “I didn’t really agree with bringing the pop acts in.” Brod saw the writing on the wall when the decommissioning scheme for the fishing boats started: “There was horrific tension. We couldn’t talk to the people about decorating their boats if they didn’t know whether they would still be here. They were asked to destroy their own boats. Beautiful, wooden boats. You can forgive them for becoming resentful.” Then the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation began the regeneration of the Fish Quay. “The fishermen could see it wasn’t about them. Unless you had a big boat, you were stuffed.”
Carol worked on the Fish Quay Festival up until 2002, after which it became a smaller-scale, more family oriented event. It ended completely in 2006 due to budget cuts by the council. The effect of what was achieved over that period of time should not be underestimated: “If you bring artists into a place, money follows. It was a great time for the arts in North Shields.” The creative spirit established by the Fish Quay Festival has not left the town, which maintains a rich and vibrant cultural scene. Many members of the youth bands involved in the Fish Quay Festival went on to develop careers as professional musicians. “They saw that being a pop star was not the only option.” Carol’s own children have undoubtedly benefited from growing up backstage. Her eldest son works on band tours after years working with stage tech companies. Her youngest, at the age of six, was taught how to stilt walk by festival performers. He spent his 18th birthday tilt-walking in Beijing and has a successful career as a professional musician performing at the Royal Albert Hall and touring with bands like the
Fun Times at the Fish Quay Festival
by Caroline Oswald
I meet up with Carol Alevroyianni and Richard Broderick (Brod) in Carol’s kitchen. Every surface is strewn with memorabilia from the North Shields Fish Quay Festival, the major annual music and arts event that the pair worked together on for well over a decade. Talking to Carol and Brod about how they helped shape the festival from humble beginnings into such a large-scale operation, I realise the lasting impact of this significant cultural celebration.
In 1986, Carol was working for North Tyneside Council as arts officer with Principal Arts Officer, Tim Archer: “We were a tiny team based in the Buddle Arts Centre. The Fishermen’s Association approached us as they wanted to have a party in the fish sheds to coincide with the Tall Ships Race that year. They intended to invite people from the town as well as the fishing community.” Brod interjects: “Bear in mind the Fish Quay was not like it is today. Those sheds were falling down. There was no fishmonger. You had to buy fish by the stone!” Nevertheless, Carol went along to meet Norrie Morse, fisherman and boat owner and John Carter, of Caley Fisheries. In the end it was too late to organise anything for that year but the idea was sparked. Tim saw the opportunity to create something special up North celebrating the fishing community alongside Covent Garden-style street theatre and live music. At the time, economic development money was available for areas of industrial decline. North Shields definitely fit this description and Tim secured money from the Urban Regeneration Fund (URF) to hold the first Fish Quay Festival in 1987.
The annual Fishermen’s Regatta was a lost tradition, with decorated boats going up the river to Newcastle for a day out. Tim wanted to bring that back and talked the Fishermen’s Mission into moving the ‘Blessing of the Fleet’ to the festival date too. The late May Bank Holiday was chosen for the best chance of decent weather and to get the schools on board (Brod points out they disregarded the fact that the Fish Quay had been under water at this time of year on more than one occasion, before the wave trap was built in the 1990s). Tim wanted to involve the local community as well as the fishing industry. He needed a bigger team of people to make the festival happen and recruited Freeform Arts (later Northern Freeform), led by Martin Goodrich. Martin appealed for local artists who wanted to work. Brod was put in touch with Freeform by fellow artist, Sally Brown. Martin asked “Can you make stuff?” to which Brod replied, “Aye, a bit.” Martin confirmed: “Okay, you’re in. Do you know anyone else?” Since the pay was a bit better than the dole, Brod agreed, bringing in friends, Graham Robinson and Pete Curran. They were joined by secret weapon, Boris Howarth, of Welfare State International, a vibrant collective of artists producing large-scale events and celebrations. “I was learning at the knee of a master,” Brod reminisces. “He knew how to get people involved in a carnival. I don’t know where we would have been without him.” Freeform were all about using an artistic approach to change environments within communities, involving local people in transforming their surroundings by redesigning environments such as gardens and school playgrounds.
The idea behind the 1987 Fish Quay Festival was simple: the fishing fleet, exhibitions, street theatre, music and food. “The first year we had Ray Stubbs on the jazz stage by the ferry landing,” Carol remembers. Brod disagrees. “No, it was on the Western Quay!” Memory is a funny thing, and other disagreements about the finer points of the festival often come up. Carol insists: “We only had a jazz stage in the first year, but it was too far away. The main stage was on the Western Quay.” Carol’s dad, Norman Brown, a keen amateur jazz musician, suggested artists for the jazz stage but sadly died before the first festival took place. The headline act that year was the world music collective, Grand Union Orchestra. An exhibition was held in the fish sheds where the fishermen had wanted their party the previous year. The walls were lined with marine ply to display work by local artists such as Ivan Lindsay. Amber Films distributed a folder of photos documenting the fishing industry for all the fish shops to display. The Seafish authority ran cookery demonstrations. There was a huge display of wet fish and interactive sessions on rope making, net mending and stalls selling keepsakes made from materials from broken-up ships. “The quality of stuff on sale that first year was the best!” Carol proclaims. As a former journalist married to acclaimed press photographer John Alevroyiannis, Carol wanted to make the 1987 Fish Quay Festival front-page news. The Sunday Sun said they would put it on their front page if 150,000 people turned up on the Saturday and if she could get the mayor to dance at the front of the parade! Both of these things occurred and the Fish Quay Festival made the headlines.
After a fantastic firework display on Saturday night, Sunday morning was for the ‘Blessing of the Fleet’. Freeform had set up above the post office on Saville street where they worked on the street pageant and site decorations and supported the fishermen and their wives to decorate the boats for a parade up the river. Brod recalls: “We also had a children’s arena full of workshops and activities and held ‘It’s A Knockout’ style competitions such as the ‘Fish O’limpets’. We sprayed a large stretch of polythene with oil and fairy liquid across the Western Quay and had hose pipes connected to the fire hydrants. There were daft races- people put fish down their trousers. It was in the days before health and safety and it could get dangerous!” Carol was exhausted after the first festival was over. As well as the organisation, the small team had to do much of the physical setting-up themselves. It was only later that she realised the reason for her tiredness was that she had been pregnant with her son!
After the success of the first weekend festival, from the following year it ran across the Saturday, Sunday and Monday of the bank holiday weekend. The Fish Quay Festival became bigger and better, thanks to investment from businesses with generous advertising budgets: “Siemens gave us £20,000 the year they opened on Silverlink!” Carol recalls. Other significant sponsors were British Gas, Northern Electric, Guinness and Northern Rock Foundation. “Most of the money came from sponsorship and trade on the site with a core budget from the council.” It soon became Europe’s biggest free festival, with up to 600,000 people attending over three days.
Freeform Arts shaped the look and feel of the whole event each year, creating unique stage decorations and memorable pageants featuring imaginative creations such as gigantic figureheads and a huge swan made from the old printing plates from the Chronicle and Journal newspapers. They worked with many local schools. When I share my memories of Freeform coming into my school in 1987 to help us make octopus costumes and teach us a special song and dance, Brod states that this was in fact the following year: “Show me a parade and I’ll tell you the year! 1989 was the best year for the boat decoration and parades. We made figureheads for all the boats. One had a theme inspired by the film South Pacific with a volcano around the funnel. It caught fire!” The Mortal Orchestra was a particularly striking group of Catalonian style ‘gigantes’ made by Brod and Graham: “Pax Nindi from the Arts Council came to see us. We ended up going on tour!” They also had a visit from Chair of the Arts Council, Sandy Nairn, who ended up running the National Gallery: “He was meant to be picked up by my friend’s boat so we could show him the fishscape from afar. But the boat was stuck with my friend out on the river – it had broken down! We just took him to the Prince of Wales for a pint instead.” Freeform’s fishscape art installation, completed in 1988, still stands on the bankside today.
Carol regularly went to the Womex music expo and European street festivals to find artists who might tour and to arrange partnerships with other festivals. For many musicians it was a gateway to a European tour: “We collaborated to book world music bands from Europe, Africa and South America. Lubi Jovanovic, a promoter and DJ, was promoting some of the great Latin American bands and helped us bring Grupo Kilmax to North Shields, among many others.” Kenny Murray, founding director of Liverpool’s Africa Oye festival, helped bring artists such as Papa Wemba and Cheik Lo, and the list goes on. Legends including The Wailers, Desmond Decker and Gino Washington came to North Shields. Carol considers the ‘Window on the World’ Fish Quay Festival in 2000 to have been the best for music. The programme shows a map and listings for all the stages: the Orange World Stage, Celtic Dance Stage, Dolphin Stage, Jumpin’ Hot Club Stage, Galaxy Radio Stage and the Street Theatre Arena. Artists included Toto La Momposina, The Popes, Asian Dub Foundation, Yat Kha and Nitin Sawhney, with the performance broadcast live to the nation as part of the BBC Music Live festival. Young drummers including Percussion Posse, DrumDin’s youth band, took part in a national mass drumming performance next to The Wooden Doll pub (now How Do You Do). For the festival finale, the Backbeat Beatles joined in a national live rendition of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ with the BBC. I personally remember seeing bands such as the Levellers and Aswad among many others. One year I rushed to the Jumpin’ Hot Club tent to see Blue Rodeo, who I knew filled stadiums in Canada. That same year I surprised my Canadian friend on a visit over there by taking her a fish and chip wrapper signed by all the members.
The weather did not usually cause any problems – the torrential rain actually added to the atmosphere of Asian Dub Foundation’s set and one year the Royal Northern Sinfonia orchestra had to be swiftly relocated to the fish sheds when the heavens opened! In 1999 Carol had to cut Bob Geldof’s performance short in case the steel deck stage went live because it had become so wet with the rain bleaching in. In 2001, I remember getting sunstroke as I waited hours with my friend and her daughter for the manufactured pop band Hear’say to appear. “There was road congestion for miles,” remembers Carol. “People were flooding down the bankside. I saw faces pressed up against the mesh fences.” This moment was probably the beginning of the end for Carol: “I didn’t really agree with bringing the pop acts in.” Brod saw the writing on the wall when the decommissioning scheme for the fishing boats started: “There was horrific tension. We couldn’t talk to the people about decorating their boats if they didn’t know whether they would still be here. They were asked to destroy their own boats. Beautiful, wooden boats. You can forgive them for becoming resentful.” Then the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation began the regeneration of the Fish Quay. “The fishermen could see it wasn’t about them. Unless you had a big boat, you were stuffed.”
Carol worked on the Fish Quay Festival up until 2002, after which it became a smaller-scale, more family oriented event. It ended completely in 2006 due to budget cuts by the council. The effect of what was achieved over that period of time should not be underestimated: “If you bring artists into a place, money follows. It was a great time for the arts in North Shields.” The creative spirit established by the Fish Quay Festival has not left the town, which maintains a rich and vibrant cultural scene. Many members of the youth bands involved in the Fish Quay Festival went on to develop careers as professional musicians. “They saw that being a pop star was not the only option.” Carol’s own children have undoubtedly benefited from growing up backstage. Her eldest son works on band tours after years working with stage tech companies. Her youngest, at the age of six, was taught how to stilt walk by festival performers. He spent his 18th birthday stilt-walking in Beijing and has a successful career as a professional musician performing at the Royal Albert Hall and touring with bands like the Baghdaddies. “I remember him being strapped to me and sleeping through the Saturday night fireworks as a tiny baby in ‘88.”
Carol maintains that the Fish Quay Festival is one of the things of which she is most proud: “As Artistic Director for all but two years between 1987 and 2002, I was privileged to be able to bring amazing artists to the area.” The festival enabled lasting creative partnerships that are still benefiting the local area today. At the time of writing, Carol and Brod were in the midst of organising the 2025 Whitley Bay Carnival: “We wanted to create something similar to the Fish Quay Festival. We deliberately chose the same date, the late May bank holiday.” In recent years the Carnival has welcomed many of the musicians and street performers who delighted North Shields festival goers. DrumDin community samba band are regulars. Brazilian musical director, Mestre Memeu of Olodum, who recorded with Paul Simon, performed in 2024. Even Freeform Fish Quay favourite, The Mortal Orchestra, have made an appearance: “We thought it would be their final outing, but we’ve taken them to Spain and all over since then!” Brod explains. Carol recalls when she was small: “Every village had a carnival or gala. That’s what we’ve modelled the carnival on.” As we speak, she receives a phone call from one of Whitley Bay’s mosques. Carol and Brod are delighted to receive confirmation that they will be participating in the carnival for the very first time this year. It is wonderful to witness the creative duo’s enthusiasm for bringing something unique to their community year after year. However long they continue to do so, there is no denying the legacy of what they have achieved by, as Carol puts it, “just getting together and doing something”.
The Whitley Bay Carnival is a colourful family festival to be held from the 23rd to the 25th of May this year. There is a ticketed opening event on Friday and on Saturday a parade will start at 11am from Whitley Bay metro station down to the Spanish City Plaza and Links. There is a ticketed Carnival Ball for all ages on Saturday evening. On Sunday there will be live music and street theatre from 10am, as well as the exciting sports event, the Heritage Games and a mini car show. The Carnival Finale is at 4:30pm. Find out more at: http://whitleybaycarnival.co.uk
Carnival Ball for all ages on Saturday evening. On Sunday there will be live
music and street theatre from 10am, as well as the exciting sports event,
the Heritage Games and a mini car show. The Carnival Finale is at 4:30pm.
Find out more at: http://whitleybaycarnival.co.uk
