Meet The Neighbours - Geoff Kirkwood

Geoff Kirkwood is an internationally-renowned artist, musician, performer, DJ and label owner who has recently taken over 131 Bedford Street, now OneThreeOneSpace.

After being empty for 12 years, the local heritage building will be transformed into affordable spaces for creatives and artists with studios, workspaces, offices, a café bar and more.

Battle Hill-raised, Geoff’s ‘Bed Wetter’ project saw him appointed as artist in residence at Sage Gateshead (The Glasshouse International Centre for Music) for 2020/2021, where he wrote an orchestral symphony which was performed by Royal Northern Sinfonia.

Until November 2022 Geoff was the culture and community lead at Newcastle’s World Headquarters taking music and nightlife out to the wider community in the North East. He currently has a similar role working in London for the social enterprise Projekt which sees him working alongside organisations such as The Lord Mayors Office, The London Festival of Architecture, The City of London Corporation and a host of cultural bodies and local authorities in the capital.

Along with his wife, Adriana, Geoff also operates Futured, a social enterprise focussed on regional development in the North East that engages music, art and culture to bring training and investment to the region in a way that helps it retain the talent that it already has, while helping the region continue to grow as a creative destination.

He said: “I left the region because I felt like I needed to for the sake of my music career. A decade later and I’ve come back to a very different place where you can really feel the excitement and energy in the air. There’s nowhere else in the world I would live now.

“We have so much unique talent in the North East that authentically represents who we are, and I genuinely hate the thought of losing any of that to another part of the world just because they felt they couldn’t achieve their dreams here. People should travel because they want to, not because they have to, and that’s the basis of all the stuff we’re trying to provide locally.

“I’m a pretty ambitious person, but it’s nice to feel like the people around me in North Shields feel the same way. There really does seem to be a shared purpose now and I’m really excited that we get to play our part in that.”