What Have the Romans Done for Us?
What Have the Romans Done for Us?
Byker, Shieldfield, Battlefield and Ouseburn, Newcastle
July 6th, 2025
*Project Development & Producing
Created especially for the Ouseburn Festival, What Have the Romans Done for Us? was a family-friendly, multi-site street theatre performance.
Building Culture were invited to guest-produce an element of the 2025 Ouseburn Festival, and worked with associate producer Lindsay Nicholson, to develop and deliver the piece.
With a community cast and site-specific surprises we invited guests to explore what it means to live in the shadow (or glory?) of a fallen empire, co-creating work with the communities surrounding Ouseburn.
For one day only surprise sites in Battlefield, Shieldfield and Byker were activated on the hour welcoming local residents, neighbouring communities and festival goers alike.
The main focus is just welcoming people into the communities seeing the creativity that’s naturally there, smashing any kind of presumptions about these communities, entertaining each other and having a bit of fun.
What’s Happened at Each Site?
Battlefield
An intimate, unplugged performance of and poetry and traditional east African music.
Music by Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno
Poetry by ‘The Unexpected Poet’ David Roe & Andrew Mears.
Shieldfield
A special performance by the Shieldfield Youth Programme. Partnered with Dwellbeing Shieldfield and Newbridge Project.
This lot are anything but ordinary…
Byker
The Goddess of Wisdom made plans for the future of Byker with her strange aunties in this fun, fiery piece of site specific performance.
Performed by Hedley Sugar Wells, Holly Irving & Rosa Stourac McCreery.
Watch out for Romans!
As the audience travelled through the Ouseburn between sites, they were encouraged to keep an eye out for our roaming Romans!
They popped up to help people find their way – and had a surprise or two up their sleeves!
