Guiding Principles

The Sage Gateshead's performance, learning and participation programmes, which are of equal status and importance in our work, are dedicated to:

• Expanding the musical horizons of all our audiences, artists, students and staff - becoming an organisation trusted by artists and the wider community as a rewarding centre for musical discovery
• Valuing equally all kinds of music-making, and seeking to make fruitful connections in all our work between performance and participation, education and entertainment
• Valuing the artistic excellence of our resident and associated musicians, and creating an organisational culture which encourages and enables artists to flourish and develop
• Extending a hospitable welcome, both to our building and to our programmes, to everyone living, working or studying in the region and to our national and international visitors

Core Values

We have adopted 27 Core Values

1. North Music Trust's mission statement consists of just one word: music. Our programming embraces performance and participation, entertainment and education in one holistic continuum, and pioneers fresh, internationally distinctive ways of putting music at the heart of current social and cultural agendas.

2. The Sage Gateshead offers an outstanding new platform to the region's own artists and music educators, in parallel with welcoming leading national and international artists, particularly those encouraged by the music centre to visit the region for the first time.

3. The Trust plays a key role in the social and economic regeneration of Gateshead and of the wider region, working in close partnership with other organisations sharing the same regenerative aims. The Sage Gateshead was created to add value and fresh opportunities to the region; not to divert resources from one place to another.

4. The integrated structure of North Music Trust brings together a substantial team of artists and staff as one organisation. That team, along with all the other resources available to the Trust, is managed as effectively, efficiently and imaginatively as possible to achieve the Trust's objectives.

5. The Trust's management ethos encourages amongst all employees within and without The Sage Gateshead a depth of understanding of the interrelated nature of all the Trust's activities, and their equal importance in fulfilling the Trust's mission and expressing the values set out in this document.

6. North Music Trust has a wide range of stakeholding partners in the public, private and voluntary sectors, and within its immediate local community in Gateshead. They are all vital to the future of The Sage Gateshead. We will seek to build high level, mutually comprehending relationships of energy and trust with them all.

A Resource for the Region

7. The Sage Gateshead is a regional resource of the highest international quality, and a catalyst and focus for music and music education throughout the region. Over time The Sage Gateshead will contribute to raising the levels of cultural experience and expectation, and the quality and breadth of music education, throughout the North of England.

8. The whole region, its people and cultures, is reflected in the work of The Sage Gateshead, which projects a 'sense of place' rooted in, and promoting to the wider world, the cultures of the North of England.

9. The Sage Gateshead supports the widest possible diffusion of work by artists associated with the centre, internationally, nationally and within our own region. Wherever it is working the centre will complement indigenous musical activities, seeking to encourage and develop local initiatives.

10. North Music Trust encourages people throughout the region not only to visit The Sage Gateshead but also to make remote use of its facilities, using the latest technology to access information held in The Sage Gateshead about all aspects of music and the region's musical life.

11. The Trust will build collaborative relations with arts and entertainment organisations across the region, wherever possible sharing throughout the region the knowledge and experience of people working in the region's new 'centre without walls'. Similarly the Trust collaborates with educational bodies of all kinds, both at a regional and a national level, in the development of its own education programmes.

12. In The Sage Gateshead, the Trust has stewardship of a unique regional resource. The Sage Gateshead's resources have been specified to enable it to host those occasional events of exceptional scale, profile or importance to the region, which depend for their success on having access to the highest level of international facilities.

Inclusivity and Equality

13. North Music Trust recognises no artistic hierarchy based on distinctions between different kinds of music. We aspire simply to give our users the highest quality of educational, artistic and recreational experience in all the activities the Trust presents or hosts.

14. The educational and participatory activities offered by the Trust ranges from opportunities for the complete beginner, of any age, to provision at degree and postgraduate level.

Active Accessibility

15. The Trust understands access as an active rather than reactive responsibility, and aims to set new standards for promoting a positively inviting accessibility in all it does.

16. We recognise that many different kinds of barriers can discourage people from becoming involved with the arts - building design and operational practices, pricing, and many less tangible social, cultural and educational factors. We explore new ways of overcoming those barriers, and seek to ensure that no avoidable barriers prevent any of our users, artists or employees fulfilling their potential in The Sage Gateshead.

17. The welcoming ease of communication taken for granted in many traditional and popular music's are an inspiration and model for the Trust, and set the tone in all our activities. Whether they are formal or informal, their presentation will be approachable, friendly and inviting: never aloof or autocratic.

A Centre for Discovery

18. Education is at the heart of the work of the Trust and of The Sage Gateshead, which is a centre for lifelong musical discovery for all its users: audiences and performers, students and teachers, and for our own staff. Education is not a discrete activity for the Trust, but an organisational approach permeating everything we do. The physical and virtual thresholds of The Sage Gateshead are the gateway to a very wide range of different kinds of enriching learning experiences.

Doing and Listening

19. The Sage Gateshead is dedicated to participation in music as well as to listening. The Trust encourages participatory activities throughout its work in the centre and the wider region, and where appropriate links opportunities for listening with other opportunities for direct participation.

20. The centre encourages all its listeners to see themselves as active audiences. We encourage everyone using the centre to seize the opportunities it offers, to be adventurous and inquisitive about the unfamiliar, and to make fresh discoveries in music they think they know.

Resident and associated artists

21. Folkworks and Northern Sinfonia and their associated ensembles and artistic directors are at the heart of the North Music Trust, and are fully involved in the management and artistic planning of The Sage Gateshead. It offers them an outstanding new platform for their existing work; exciting new facilities and resources with which to develop and grow, and a launch pad for their work beyond The Sage Gateshead.

22. Northern Sinfonia and Folkworks were founding partners in the creation of The Sage Gateshead, which will then form special relationships with a wider circle of associated artists - in all kinds of music and in other art forms.

23. The Trust actively welcomes to The Sage Gateshead creative and interpretative artists whose work excites us and our audiences, creating new opportunities for the region and seeking to build long-term partnerships rooted in a shared commitment to The Sage Gateshead and its mission.

Quality and Reality

24. Once we have committed to an event or activity, our users and clients and their patrons will all enjoy the highest quality of service we can provide, whoever they are and in whatever activity they are engaged.

25. However, the region's historic shortage of music facilities is likely to lead to demands on The Sage Gateshead that will outrun our facilities and resources. We are unlikely to be able to take on all the activities proposed to us, and will have to make choices. In making those choices, we will focus our resources on making significant strategic interventions in the areas of greatest need, where our facilities are most specifically appropriate; complementing rather than duplicating existing musical activities, and recognising the particular needs of communities and areas of music previously neglected in the region.

A Centre for Today

26. During the last fifty years Britain has undergone major demographic and social changes, many of them with extensive lifestyle consequences. Wherever appropriate in our planning, we will respond to those changes by exploring fresh approaches to the presentation and performance of all kinds of music. Those new approaches will be developed to answer the needs of today; of our users, and of this region.

27. In its energy and distinctiveness, our programming will aim to create an atmosphere of permanent festival, radiating that inspirational sense of excitement, adventure and occasion of the world's leading music festivals.