My LGBTQ+ media centre has had worldwide interest since our Royal Television Society Award success
The leader of a Gateshead media centre has said the site’s recent Royal Television Society Award has given a new lease of life for the site.
The Pride Media Centre near Pelaw was awarded the Centre of the Year Award at the Royal Television Society North East and the Borders Awards 2025 and the result has been huge for the business.
Opened in 2019, the site - which is the UK’s first LGBTQ+ media centre - hosts studios, meeting rooms, performance spaces, recording facilities and offices for businesses, charities and organisations. It also houses Pride Radio which is broadcast across the North East and is available elsewhere online.
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“We’ve had a brilliant month” explains Peter Darrant, CEO of Pride Media. “The idea is it’s a space for queer, questioning and alike clients to come together and forget about who they are and how they identify and just be creative, and we’ve launched our Summer of Pride with Out North East.”
Durrant is also part of the team who heads up pride events in Sunderland, Gateshead and South Tyneside.
“It’s interesting with awards” he explains. “We’ve won a few across the organisations and I’m always a bit flippant about it.
“I will say ‘oh it’s great’, but there’s no cheque with it. It’s another thing to polish, but the Royal Television Society, I’ll tell you what, I swallowed my words.
What is does within our industry is it reminds people about us. We took about two grands worth of bookings over the two weeks after we won including for a film company in Sydney, Australia who needed to shoot in the North East.
“They’ve booked us for two days at the studios, they then asked us to commission film editors and sound. We’ve actually managed to spread the work.
“It’s nice to win the awards” he admits, “but it’s also nice getting the phone calls to ask ‘can we book the studios?’
“And also what it says for the LGBTQ+ community, it says the North East is a safe and inclusive place to be creative for all young people, and that’s powerful.”
Darrant will also be the face behind many pride community events across the region this summer, with plenty already announced in Tyne and Wear, with more expected to come in the weeks and months before things get underway.
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