
What we’re about
Welcome to North East Culture & Conversation! 👋
This is a new social group for meeting and mingling with potential new friends in lovely locations, and bonding over shared interests. It’s aimed at the 20s, 30s and 40s age range.
Here you’ll find coffee gatherings, board game meets, dinners, a cake club offering convivial chatter for those with a sweet tooth, and some fun days out too. From time to time, we may offer some cocktail events and parties to bring everyone together, as well 🍸🍷🥳.
Our Adventures in Art 🖼️ events centre around not just visiting museums and galleries, but also trying out new creative skills such as life drawing and pottery painting. There are other cultural activities to try out too, such as theatre trips and live music events. For those who enjoy cross-stitch, crochet or knitting with a side of chitchat, come and join our Stitch and B*tch🪡🧵😉 …
We host two book clubs - one for fiction and one for non-fiction - take your pick or try both! We also offer film club events from time to time, which skew towards foreign, cult and indie movies. It’s great if you want to engage in thought provoking discussion! 📚🎬
Sometimes we attend talks and lectures too, on various subjects: science, history, psychology, classics and more! It’s a great opportunity to learn something new and explore ideas together 🤓.
Our events are primarily based in Newcastle and the surrounding areas, but sometimes we’ll venture a little further afield for day trips and some special adventures! If you’re interested in helping out with hosting in Durham, Sunderland or Northumberland, let us know as we’d love to branch out to offer events for young people there as well. If you have any ideas for new events, too, we are certainly open to suggestions ☺️.
We do ask that members use their first name rather than an initial on their profile, and recommend using a recognisable photo of themselves. We are all here to meet with new people face to face! Clarity about who you are when you show up helps both the organisers and the members 😊.
The group is fuelled on the values of friendliness, kindness and mutual respect. We are all adults, so let’s act like it 😉! Bigotry, harassment and abusive behaviour won’t be tolerated. We aim to foster a pro-social environment, so try to be considerate of your fellow members.
Now let’s have some fun 🤩!
Upcoming events (4)
See all- Coffee and Conversation: Picnic in the Park! ☕️ 🌳 🥪The Tower Café (Leazes Park), Newcastle upon Tyne
We’re a talkative bunch in North East Culture & Conversation 💬! Join us at Leazes Park for an outdoor chat and a cuppa (and a bite to eat too if you’re peckish) ☕️🫖.
These coffee afternoons are pretty relaxed and a great opportunity to make new friends or catch up with old ones. Whether you’re new in town or just looking to branch out more socially, come along and join the conversation 🗣️.
The Tower Café in Leazes Park offers food and drink 🥪🍰🍕, and as we are outside you are welcome to bring your thermos and your own snacks along too! The café also hosts the park's toilet facilities. The café itself closes at 4pm but the park will remain open for us to linger and chat a while after.
We'll take advantage of the hopefully lovely summer weather, so bring along a picnic blanket if you have one handy!
This is an open session - feel free to drop in when you can and stay as long as you like. Come and make some new connections! 🤝☺️
- Book Club: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro ☀️🤖Centurion Bar, Newcastle
Whether you’re a true bookworm or simply seeking a motivation to get reading more often, the book club is a great place for conversation and meeting new people! Come and enjoy some interesting discussion alongside more relaxed chatter, with the book as the jumping off point.
🗣️📖
This time, we’ll be reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro , visiting the near-future to meet Klara, a solar-powered artificial friend who is a companion to a sickly child called Josie ☀️👭.
Ishiguro's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize, Klara and the Sun received critical acclaim, with reviewers describing it as a "haunting fable" and a "dazzling genre-bending work" 🌟!
Themes we will no doubt discuss include the nature of artificial life, consciousness and the comparisons to be made with the AI chatbot world we now live in 🤖 💻 …
The Centurion is a relaxed, elegant and spacious bar with comfortable seating and a quiet atmosphere, well-suited to literary conversations! 📕🍷
Converted from the historic first class lounge at Central Station 🚂✨, its luxuriant environs are situated at ground floor level, easily accessible, with public transport links aplenty nearby. If you’re feeling peckish there are various shops adjacent that you can pick up nibbles from.
This is an open session, so feel free to drop by at any time during the evening: we’re pretty easygoing ☺️.
Hope you can join us 📚!