Apologies for the delay in responding.
To confirm, I'd be willing to host a council meeting here in Newcastle. I could also do so in future years if that was preferable.
Venues:
There are two possible venues:
A) One is the city centre campus, for which I could find one or more meeting rooms, downtown has plenty of hotels, airbnb, restaurants and that sort of thing.
B) The other possible venue would be about 9 miles out of the city centre (direct metro line) in either a hotel conference room (at charge) or the Dove Marine Laboratory. This is a research institution in a victorian building right on the beach in Cullercoats bay https://goo.gl/maps/cJLSCEX8jHS2, a short walk south is Tynemouth (lots of trendy restaurants, cafes, lovely ruined medieval priory). I've been to university workshops at the Dove and will investigate the rules for booking it. No idea if it is free then. There is also a 'Premier Inn' hotel with conference rooms in Whitley Bay right next to the iconic recently refurbished Spanish City building (mentioned in a Dire Straits song if you are into such trivia).
Travel: Newcastle Airport is connected to the city by a quick, fairly inexpensive and frequent metro system (that goes out to the coast and covers the whole metropolis area between Newcastle, the coast, and Sunderland.) Newcastle Airport is usually 1 hop to most major interchanges (via Heathrow, Schiphol, etc.)
Dates: As we're really far North (literally, Hadrian's wall used to run through Newcastle), then later is better in terms of weather. In terms of the university calendar the Easter Break is from Friday 29 March to Monday 29 April. Good Friday is 19 April, Easter Monday: 22 April. I only mention it because these are probably not good days to travel or find open restaurants for large groups. I'm busy in the week 1-5 April doing a TEI workshop. This actually presents an opportunity where we might have budget to help with the travel for 1 (or 2 max) council members if they were also teaching on that workshop. This would mean maybe having it sometime in 6 - 12 April. According to weather.com historically that is like 9-10C/48-50F around that time of year (and windy on the coast).
Some random videos:
University promotional ones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3jR3NvU-TY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htlYW8RppWA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okf1pmDkem8
Cullercoats bay with Dove Marine Laboratory in the middle, boring drone footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BKf4hZNWRM
Whitley Bay and Tynemouth, better drone footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn5nx6VIAhw
Spanish City (during refurb) boring drone footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4dHu_t9ETMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxHW3j83IDY
Many thanks,
James
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Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@newcastle.ac.uk
School of English Literature, Language, and Linguistics, Newcastle University
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From: Tei-council