Five Minutes With… The Seven Bridges

What was the idea behind setting up The Seven Bridges?

Archie: The main idea was to have a café in the centre of Newcastle that’s representative of the people who live in the city.

Newcastle is a recognised City of Sanctuary that welcomes refugees and those seeking asylum from all over the world and The Seven Bridges was set up as a place where people who aren’t allowed to work, whilst having their application for asylum processed, can come and volunteer and share in our experience and expertise with hospitality.

Volunteers who come to us then share their own expertise and love of food. Quite often I’m the least capable chef in the room!

Archie, you previously worked for Magic Hat Café – another local eatery with a mission beyond just profit. What attracts you to these kinds of roles?

Archie: I think cooking can be a really useful tool in sharing knowledge and every day here is an opportunity to learn new things from people who come into the orbit of the kitchen.

Food can be political as well, in a whole variety of ways, and putting that to some kind of use is really important. I think that’s why I’m geared more towards organisations with a kind of social interest aspect.

How did your collaboration with West End Refugees Service come about?

Alex: It started back during the COVID pandemic. During lockdown, we obviously couldn’t open the building and Dance City’s kitchen was sitting here empty so we were asking ourselves what we could do to help the community.

Dance City’s CEO and artistic director Anand Bhatt reached out to West End Refugee Service and said that we could cook meals here for people in need of food. It started out as a Sunday kitchen where staff were coming in and working together to cook meals and delivering them to service users of West End Refugee Service.

That’s how the partnership started and when we were finally able to open up Dance City again and the world was getting back to normal, there was this lingering thought of how we could still work together. It took quite a lot of discussion about how we could provide something that worked for Dance City and provided something for refugees and those seeking sanctuary. The café was born out of that idea and how our community can work together – how we can bridge the gap between the city centre community and the community of Newcastle’s West End.

It's worked really well, especially for the staff of Dance City being able to get involved in something new and getting to meet so many different people.

What do West End Refugee Service clients get out of volunteering at The Seven Bridges? 

Archie: We train our volunteers in Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety. Often, you’re not required to have any kind of formal training or college degree when you go into a hospitality job, so it’s an amazing thing to leave with.

We like to think that in our six-week programme, people go from having no hospitality experience to being ready for a trial shift at any other restaurant or café in Newcastle – most importantly with the confidence to know their own skill set and trust their palate, especially if they’re cooking.

Alex: It’s really up to the volunteers too. If someone doesn’t want to cook or doesn’t feel comfortable in the kitchen they can be out front serving instead, talking to customers and working on their language skills – it’s really volunteer-led and about what they want to do.

What kind of food can guests expect at The Seven Bridges? 

Archie: I kind of encourage people to feel comfortable cooking whatever food that most interests them. I have a basic repertoire of café-friendly food like soups and sarnies and salads, but the most interesting things on the menu are the dishes that the volunteers bring!

We try to change our menu on a weekly basis but in keeping with a heavy rotational volunteer special. We test and try dishes over the course of a few weeks and go through a process of trying to make them more in-keeping with seasonal British ingredients. It’s volunteers who bring the ideas, energies and methods and then we try and make it fit with what’s seasonal – it's kind of an exchange in that I’ll introduce our volunteers to seasonal British cooking and they introduce us to a whole load of global cuisine.

Have you picked up any new skills or recipes from your volunteers while working at The Seven Bridges?

Archie: Every day is a school day! We don’t always communicate in English so it’s been kind of fun trying to communicate via the food and recipes instead. Right now, I think we have eight different languages spoken in the kitchen as we have volunteers from across east Africa, west Africa, Turkey, Hong Kong and Iran.

We have all these different influences and if we don’t know how to cook something that one of our volunteers has suggested, we’ll try different things out and experiment. I think I’m learning more than I ever have before!

Has there been a standout dish from one of your volunteers that you’ve particularly enjoyed?

Archie: They’ve all been incredible but there was this one poached chicken dish that was on the menu here before I arrived and I got the recipe from one of our volunteers, Kim. I made it at home and it’s one of those recipes that’s so simple but so delicious.

Alex: Kim is a fantastic Seven Bridges success story too. She volunteered with us for quite a few weeks and then gained the right to work in the UK. We provided references for her and she now works in hospitality, having gained experience volunteering here. She’s such a lovely person and we’re all really pleased she’s managed to find work.

How has business been since opening last summer?

Archie: I think it’s building and building. The energies that our volunteers bring make it a place that I know I would want to come and eat at! Hopefully it’ll get even bigger and better over the next year.

Alex: The staff here at Dance City are all on board with both the concept of the café and eating here too. People that come to our public classes and shows are on board as well and we’ve had a lot of people from other cultural venues stopping by too – it’s been really nice and busy!

What plans do you have for The Seven Bridges café in the future?

Alex: As a collaboration between two charities, the goal is really just to make it work and feed any surplus the café makes back into our volunteer programme so that we can do more and potentially offer more formal-based training in the future. 

Archie: The aim really is to have a surplus that is shared between Dance City, The Seven Bridges and West End Refugee Service so that they can deliver on a whole number of other incredible projects and we can increase our capacity.

We’d love to continue to extend our volunteer programme and sustain the relationships that we’re already building with people – so if volunteers want to remain part of our team past the initial six weeks, they’re always more than welcome.

We want to get volunteers with the right to work into jobs or to start up their own food business, for sure, and if we can do that while the café makes a bit of money to continue funding all our work – that would be the dream!

The Seven Bridges is located within Dance City at Temple St, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4BR. For more information including opening times and food serving times, visit www.thesevenbridges.co.uk.

Main Image: Photo by Tom Banks

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