Alive after Five' is currently a major focus for Newcastle NE1's aim to 'close the gap' between the current city centre 6pm shop closing times and the 8pm evening economy opening.

Newcastle city centre offers great shopping, hotels, bars and restaurants. The local theatre, museums, galleries, music and dance venues are world class and everything is within easy walking distance. Having said this, NE1 believe a fantastic opportunity still exists to further develop the currently un-even early evening economy.

As it stands, there is no opportunity for city centre business to generate income in this intervening period and through the 'Alive after Five' programme, Newcastle NE1 wants this to change. Newcastle NE1 had some support from the 1200 organisations that they liaise with but were seeking further support for the programme in order to make the change and launch 'Alive after Five' in October 2010. As a result, Explain was commissioned to carry out a research programme, which included gathering feedback from both the general public and local businesses.

The overall aim of the research was to understand the propensity of the public to use city centre facilities between 5pm and 8pm.

Further objectives included:

- To identify current visitor behaviour

- To understand existing visitor's propensity to change behaviour and use the proposed facilities outlined in the 'Alive after Five' concept (including retail, leisure, transport, restaurants etc)

- To gauge likelihood of visitors to use the facilities for the entire extended period between 5pm and 8pm

- To identify elements of the concept deemed as most and least appealing to the target audience

- To understand what incentives are required to change behaviour and encourage respondents to engage in the 'Alive after Five' campaign

To identifying key barriers and how to overcome these to encourage behaviour change

The research was split into two phases. Initially, on street interviews were carried out in Newcastle city centre and surrounding areas (Gateshead, Morpeth, North Shields and Hexham) to gauge interest in the Alive after 5 concept. The research looked at current visitor behaviour, propensity to change behaviour and use the proposed facilities outlined in the 'Alive after Five' concept, gauge likelihood of visitors to use the facilities for the entire extended period between 5pm and 8pm, identify elements of the concept deemed as most and least appealing to the target audience as well as identifying key barriers and how to overcome these to encourage behaviour change.

Following this an online survey was sent to businesses in the Newcastle area, including Newcastle University, Newcastle Council, One North East, Newcastle Building Society and various law firms, to gather their thoughts on the concept and their likelihood to support it.

Overall there was a strong demand for, and projected use of, the Alive after Five concept, in particular from 16-34 year olds, however propensity to support varied by respondent profile (particularly age, home location and work location). There was wide acceptance of opening hours.

Phase 1 research identified that those working within the city were much more likely to make use of the offer. This was verified further via the online survey. More than 90 per cent of traders in the shopping centre voted yes to the proposal to extend hours.

Following the interest in the concept, shown through the research, late night shopping will be available in Eldon Square after traders voted for longer opening hours Monday to Saturday. From October 25th, stores in the shopping centre will stay open until 8pm on Monday to Friday and 7pm on Saturday. Sunday trading hours will remain the same from 11am to 5pm.

Explain has since been commissioned to evaluate the ‘Alive after 5’ initiative and result will be presented back in the Spring.