When Liverpool was named as Europe's Capital of Culture for 2008, there was a sense of disappointment in the north-east of England. While Liverpool had an enviable cultural history, many thought Newcastle and its environs had done a better job, week in and week out, of promoting a lively and innovative local arts scene.
This weekend the region's consolation prize is unwrapped, in the form of the official opening for a magnificent new arts venue cloaked in sinuous glass: the Sage Gateshead music centre.
The Sage is the latest architectural jewel to stud the south bank of the Tyne, the Foster and Partners-designed concert hall sitting by the extraordinary "blinking eye" Millennium Bridge and the new Baltic contemporary "art factory", itself converted from a flour mill and opened just two years ago at a cost of £46m. Together the three projects form almost a laboratory experiment in how to regenerate an urban area such as the Gateshead quay by using culture as a tool - at a fraction of the cost of the sort of mega-investment being proposed for the 2012 Olympics in east London.
There are two points that are particularly impressive about the Sage centre. One is the quality of its acoustics, said by enthusiasts to be close to acclaimed venues such as the Meyerson Symphony Centre in Dallas or the Symphony Hall in Birmingham - both successful examples of urban regeneration through culture.
The other is in the beauty of its design - which, if not quite on the same scale as the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, is stunning in its own right. Yet Gateshead remains a heavily deprived area. The hope is it will become a magnet for the region - not just for people and jobs, but for art and inspiration as well.
