History of our building
A building Gosforth built for itself — twice
Eighty years ago, the people of Gosforth built a hall. It was paid for by public subscription — money raised by the town itself — and opened as a memorial to the townspeople who did not come home from the Second World War. It was meant as a living memorial: not a monument to look at, but a place for the community to actually use, together, for as long as it stood.
That original building didn't survive. It was lost, and for a time, Gosforth's memorial hall was gone.
A replacement was built in its place. But over the years, it too fell out of use — underused, under-loved, and eventually placed on the council's list of buildings it no longer had a use for.
The council couldn't simply dispose of it. Whatever became of the building next, it had to continue serving the community it was built for. So it went out to a competitive process, open to anyone who could show they'd use it that way.
People with learning disabilities won that process.
That original building didn't survive. It was lost, and for a time, Gosforth's memorial hall was gone.
A replacement was built in its place. But over the years, it too fell out of use — underused, under-loved, and eventually placed on the council's list of buildings it no longer had a use for.
The council couldn't simply dispose of it. Whatever became of the building next, it had to continue serving the community it was built for. So it went out to a competitive process, open to anyone who could show they'd use it that way.
People with learning disabilities won that process.
From empty hall to Gosforth Civic Theatre
In 2016, Liberdade — a company set up in 2003 by a group of young people with learning disabilities to run their own theatre — took on the lease and reopened the building to the public that August. They called it Gosforth Civic Theatre.
The lease they signed didn't just hand them a building. It bound them, legally, to keep the hall's original purpose alive: to run it as a civic hall for arts, health, education and community life. When the theatre later underwent a major redevelopment, that lease was extended to 50 years — a longer-term commitment, made because the building's civic purpose was worth investing in for the long term.
So the building has now asked the same thing of two different generations: give this place back to the community, and make sure it stays that way. The first time, it was the whole town that answered. The second time, people with learning disabilities answered — people too often not trusted with responsibility like this, who have gone on to help create a place that others need, use and value.
Carrying that story forward
In 2025, eighty years on from the hall's original dedication, Gosforth Civic Theatre took part in Our Freedom, a UK-wide project marking 80 years since the end of the Second World War — one of 60 arts centres across the country reflecting on what freedom means, then and now. GCT's contribution was Freedom Moving: Then and Now, a new performance bringing together our artists with learning disabilities, a community choir, and musicians from across Gosforth — telling the building's own story, on its own stage, to the community it was built for.
It felt right to tell that story through performance, because it's the same story the building has always been telling: that a place built by ordinary people, for each other, is worth fighting to keep — and that who gets trusted to keep it says something about what kind of community you are.
That's still true today. Gosforth Civic Theatre exists because people with learning disabilities were trusted with something the town had already decided mattered. Everything we do here — on stage, in the café, in how we're run — continues that.
