Tyne Design Week 2025
A celebration of design, creativity and innovation in the North East
Industry
Partners
Creative
NECA Northumbria, Northumbria and Newcastle Universities, and Newcastle and Gateshead Colleges
Tyne Design Week 2025 brought together the North East’s design, innovation and creative communities for a week long celebration of local talent, collaborative problem-solving and cross sector creativity.
Designed and delivered by Edge, with support from the North East Combined Authority, Northumbria and Newcastle Universities, and Newcastle and Gateshead Colleges. The festival showcased the region’s design strengths while creating opportunities for public, private, and charitable organisations to meaningfully engage with design.
The five day programme featured a wide range of events, including workshops that tackled complex challenges such as in-work poverty and the safety of women and girls on public transport, interactive networking events that brought people together, graduate showcases at colleges and universities across the region, open studio sessions that offered a look behind the scenes, and seminars that explored how design helps shape every aspect of our lives.
Tyne Design Week showcased the diversity of design in the region, from product and service design to architecture, digital creativity and material-led craft, illustrating how these disciplines work together to deliver better outcomes for people and places.
Key Objectives
Celebrate regional design by showcasing the breadth of creative talent across the North East.
Grow the design ecosystem through stronger connections between industry, education, community organisations and emerging talent.
Open participation allowing public, private and third sector partners to explore design-led ways of working and engage with real world challenges.
Strengthen visibility and confidence in the role of design as a driver of innovation, social value and commercial growth.
Grow the design ecosystem through stronger connections between industry, education, community organisations and emerging talent.
Open participation allowing public, private and third sector partners to explore design-led ways of working and engage with real world challenges.
Strengthen visibility and confidence in the role of design as a driver of innovation, social value and commercial growth.
Our Approach
Curated a region wide programme of open studios, co design sessions, challenges, exhibitions and networking events spanning 28 events across five days.
Designed inclusive opportunities for students, businesses, public services and community organisations to take part and contribute.
Fostered cross-sector collaboration through hands-on, challenge-based sessions – developing solutions to improve sleep quality, accelerate decarbonisation, enhance public transport safety, and reduce in-work poverty.
Created space for honest conversation through roundtable discussions exploring design’s role in society, collaboration, and the future of AI in creative work.
Focused on accessibility and reach by distributing events across locations, partners and formats to involve as many voices as possible.
Impact
1,024 registrations and 741 attendances, with 544 unique participants engaging across the week.
High satisfaction, ratings from participants.
Clear demand for continuation, with 96% of surveyed attendees wanting to take part in Tyne Design Week 2026.
New connections across the region, strengthening links between studios, universities, businesses, cultural institutions and public-sector partners.
Validated opportunities for improvement, including clearer scheduling, earlier promotion and more hands on, challenge focused activity.
Shared regional insights on collaboration, design’s societal value and the ethics of AI, shaping a more purposeful, community driven 2026 programme. driven 2026 programme.
Enabled new funding and investment opportunities through the solutions developed in challenge-based sessions.
