Holy Jesus Hospital - The Inner City Project(2000)

The Inner City Project(2000)

The Holy Jesus Hospital has been the centre of the National Trust’s Inner City Project. By August 2004, £800,000 had been spent on renovating the building. Funds for the restoration of the site came from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Tyne and Wear Partnership. The project been running since 1987 in the east end of Newcastle working with young people from 12-25 and with the over 50s, taking them out to the countryside. The National Trust needed a central office to expand their work into other inner city areas, so a 25 year lease was negotiated with the council. The Exhibition Room on the site features touch screens and 3D models to help teach people about the site's history of helping the townspeople. In the book The Remains of Distant Times: Archaeology and the National Trust, Priscilla Boniface criticizes what she believes to be the National Trust's lack of interest in operating in urban environments but praises the Inner City Project as a step towards rectifying this. She wrote "Its occasional ventures - such as the Newcastle Inner City Project...by their frequent mention in National Trust communications, merely serve to underline how few of their type the Trust has to call on for report." She argues that although the aim of introducing town dwellers to the countryside is "laudable", the "respectful and serious suggestion might be made, though, that a person or person's might be usefully employed also with the objective of raising National Trust people's understanding of and confidence in their ability to visit and enjoy, or at least encounter, the city." However, Collins and Kay cite research suggesting that the scheme has been effective in promoting "social inclusion". They note, however, that the project has been limited by the funds made available to it.