How The MAC Trust has helped Sunderland's cultural regeneration as it celebrates 10-year anniversary

Sunderland Music, Arts and Culture (MAC) Trust, the charity established to develop and promote cultural activities within the city has over the past decade succeeded in bringing together people who shared a vision of Sunderland as a vibrant, creative, and exciting city where the arts, music and culture can flourish.

How it all began

Chairman of the MAC Trust, Paul Callaghan, recalls: “We launched The MAC Trust because the city was falling behind in terms of its cultural engagement and ambition.

"When we launched in 2012, we had three very clear aims: firstly, to increase people’s participation in the arts; then to create a coherent framework for cultural leadership that would allow us to raise more funding to deliver cultural and arts activity in Sunderland and finally to develop new venues that would add to the city’s existing cultural infrastructure.

“If you look at those initial ambitions, then I think it’s fair to say we’ve come a long way to achieving what we set out to do. Participation and engagement in the arts in the city has certainly increased over the last ten years, thanks to the wonderful work of several organisations in the city such as The Cultural Spring, We Make Culture and others.

"Much clearer cultural leadership has been established through the creation of Sunderland Culture and, over the last few years, we have seen the opening of exciting new venues such as the Fire Station, the Peacock, and Pop Recs.”

The Cultural Spring

“We started work on it in late 2012 shortly after the Trust had been established,” said Paul about the project which boosts arts participation at a grassroots level. “Funding for the project came from Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places fund, which aimed to increase the numbers of people taking part in cultural activities in those areas that didn’t have a tradition of engaging in the arts.

“Working with our partners, University of Sunderland, and The Customs House in South Shields, we submitted a joint bid which was successful, and we were awarded £2million for The Cultural Spring to initially work in ten wards across the two boroughs.

"The scope of the Cultural Spring’s activity has since been widened and now includes other wards across the city and we are delighted that it will continue working in Sunderland for at least another three years from next March thanks to further investment from the Arts Council.”

City of Culture Bid

After launching The Cultural Spring, the MAC Trust became a partner in 2015 in the bid for Sunderland to become the UK City of Culture 2021. It was a very close-run thing, but disappointingly the bid was not successful, and Coventry was awarded the coveted title.

However, the bid did give our cultural community confidence in its ability to develop the city’s future and, building on the Sunderland Cultural Strategy published in late 2014, Sunderland Culture was created in 2016 to deliver that promise.

This new organisation brought together the cultural programmes of the MAC Trust with those of Sunderland City Council and University of Sunderland into a single independent delivery organisation. Sunderland Culture now delivers the programmes of the National Glass Centre and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, Arts Centre Washington, and The Fire Station, as well as producing many more cultural programmes and events in communities across the city.

The Cultural Quarter

The Sunderland Empire’s neighbour, the Dun Cow, was bought in 2014 and lovingly restored as a friendly, welcoming pub and cultural venue and that was followed in 2017 by the transformation of the dilapidated Londonderry, renamed the Peacock, into a bright and modern pub and superb performance venue. Both the Dun Cow and the Peacock now provide important sources of revenue for the MAC Trust.

But the Trust’s biggest task was restoring Sunderland’s iconic Central Fire Station. Built in 1908 but vacant since 1992, the building was badly deteriorating and in danger of demolition. Fortunately, the Trust realised what it could become.

“It was a beautiful old building that had fallen into disrepair but what we saw was the potential of the Fire Station to be the centre piece of a Cultural Quarter, so with the help of generous grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and others we set about the transformation,” said Paul.

The first stage of the development of the large Fire Station site was to turn the original building into a cultural hub, with dance, drama, and literacy studios upstairs in the firefighters’ former living and sleeping quarters and a bar and bistro in the old Engine Room downstairs.

Rather unexpectedly, the Trust received a called from Kensington Palace asking if the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge could officially open the building, which they did in February 2018.

The Tall Ships

In the same year, The Tall Ships Race arrived bringing crowds numbering hundreds of thousands to the banks of the Wear. The idea of attracting the Tall Ships to the city came from John Mowbray OBE DL, then Chair of the MAC Trust and the event proved to be a huge success, partly thanks to a brilliant arts and cultural programme organised and produced by Sunderland Culture.

The Fire Station Auditorium

The following year, the MAC Trust started on Phase Two of the Fire Station development – the construction of a brand-new auditorium in the car park adjoining the restored original building.

The new £12million auditorium, part funded by a grant of £7.5million from Arts Council England, opened in December 2021.

John Mowbray said: “The MAC Trust developed from nowhere! Ten years ago, we recognised that the city needed a mid-sized auditorium – somewhere for our emerging talent to perform and for our people to be able see great performances here in their city.

“The transformation is remarkable and the new Culture House in Keel Square builds on this vision. The Fire Station itself is superb and Sunderland is now proud to have one of the best new venues in the country.

“But we’ve done so much more than construct buildings. The Cultural Spring increasing participation in cultural activities in Sunderland and South Tyneside; the City of Culture bid which pulled the city together and led to the development of Sunderland Culture to deliver all the projects in the bid regardless, the initial approach to Sail Training to bring the Tall Ships here and much more.

“The Trust may have driven the change, but it has always worked with others and encouraged everyone to think about how we can help make our city better."