Ouseburn Farm turns 50 next year. Through all that time, the city farm in the heart of Newcastle has been home to goats, pigs, chickens, bees, and thousands of people who’ve found a place to belong. From its radical beginnings in the 1970s to its role today as a charity supporting adults with learning disabilities, difficulties, and autism, the farm has always been about more than animals and vegetables.

We speak to Katie, its manager, about the farm’s history, its future, and the power of community.

In September 2021, my clever, creative, lovely mum unexpectedly, inexplicably, impossibly, died. She’d been diagnosed with cancer only six months before, just as lockdown restrictions were lifting. She was a wonderful mix of contradictions – as happy turning Deep Purple to maximum volume as painting delicate watercolours, forever patient but no-nonsense, unbeatable in a pub quiz and able to hit a baseball clean over the house with one hand, an avid reader and boundless traveller, mild mannered until she was watching the football, gentle but courageous, reserved but competitive, calm but occasionally a little wild.

Dr Matt Sutherland’s job title is Associate Professor in Marketing within Northumbria University’s Newcastle Business School.

But that doesn’t even begin to describe the role he plays.

Both within the university, and with roles with Knowledge Exchange UK, The Open North Foundation and on the management board of the Small Business Charter, Matt has carved out a niche for himself as a conduit for interaction between the worlds of academia and business.