The annual Newcastle Poetry Festival was established in 2015 by Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA) with the aim of bringing international and UK-based poets, as well as exhibitions, films and artworks, to Newcastle. The first poetry festival launched in 2015 and was the culmination of The Poetics of the Archive, a project exploring the Bloodaxe Books Archive. Other festivals have included readings by poets from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the US, and the UK, music and poetry collaborations at the Sage Gateshead,  as well as collaborations with the Royal Northern Sinfonia orchestra.