Volunteers at Tyne Theatre and Opera House recognised for their services with prestigious award

Research volunteers from Newcastle’s Tyne Theatre and Opera House have been nationally recognised for their service, with a Heritage Heroes Award. 

The Heritage Heroes Awards are a celebration of outstanding contributions that heritage volunteers across the UK have made to society. 

At Tyne Theatre and Opera House, a team of community volunteers have worked over a 12-month period to gather and renew over 23,000 images of newspaper advertisements, programmes and day-bills to create a performance database covering 52 years of the popular Newcastle theatre venue. 

The searchable database covers the opening of the Tyne Theatre and Opera House in 1867, as well as its conversion to a cinema in 1919.

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The database serves as a valuable resource for academics, historians and genealogists. 

The project was funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, which also included restoration work of the Grade I listed building, in particular the theatre’s Victorian stage machinery and investigations into further restoration plans. 

Volunteer Chairman Marshall and Project Administrator at Tyne Theatre and Opera House, Rachel Snape received the prestigious Heritage Heroes award for the volunteer team at the Heritage Alliance’s conference, which took place in London on Thursday, March 7.

Snape said of the recognition: “We are delighted that our volunteers have been recognised for their work on Tyne Theatre & Opera House’s performance calendar. Between them, they have dedicated over 1200 hours of research, and in turn brought to light decades of our theatre’s rich and varied history. We are so very grateful to them for their commitment to this project.”

To find the searchable database, please visit the Tyne Theatre and Opera House website.