View from the office
Commenting on the return to the newly refurbished space, Gary Boon, Shout’s Founder and CEO, said:
“The return to our transformed HQ is central to our ambitious growth plans. We’re thrilled to offer our people an environment that supports flexibility, wellbeing and teamwork. This space supports our future growth and development.”
Where is it?
Keel House, Garth Heads, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2JE
How big is it?
The Shout office is around 7,500 sq ft with a spacious open plan office space filled with meeting spaces, breakout areas and a kitchen. There’s a pool table, playstation and arcade machine for the team too.
The building’s large windows offer expansive views of the Quayside, several of the city’s iconic bridges and across the river to the Sage Gateshead. Situated at an elevated position at Garth Heads, Keel House offers impressive views over the River Tyne and Newcastle’s Quayside.
A two-minute stroll from Keel House will take you to Newcastle Quayside including BALTIC and The Sage Gateshead, the Millennium Bridge and a vast number of restaurants, bars and attractions. It’s also a historically rich area of the city, Keel House is surrounded by iconic historic buildings which adds an extra dimension to the work day and is fitting for an agency which is proud of its North East home.
The Sallyport Tower, a part of the original 13th century city walls is right next door – and it’s now a wedding venue. Over the road is Garth Heads, built in 1870 it now provides student accommodation but is an early example of philanthropic investment in decent housing. The Keelmen’s Hospital on the other side dates to 1701, and provided alms houses to retired Keelmen and their widows from the nearby river Tyne.
What happens there?
After a prolonged period of work from home as the building was renovated, the whole team is now embracing the opportunities for collaboration the space offers them as a hybrid workforce.
The team congregates in the kitchen or around the pool table in breaks throughout the day, and everyone benefits from the option to work away from their desk, or find a formal or casual space to meet with their peers throughout the day.
Shout have even created their own UX lab with user monitoring equipment and testing toolkit on site, so they can invite real users to test protoypes and new versions for their clients.
What sort of work goes on?
Shout Digital is a design and build agency with strong roots in customer experience. From web platforms to mobile apps or complex integration projects, the team creates perfectly engineered digital products, with user experience at their heart.
The team works on digital strategy, UX and UI design, software engineering and integration projects at the HQ. The engineering teams are focused on building, testing and optimising the code at the heart of digital products. Ensuring platforms work seamlessly, are secure and meet highest quality standards.
The UX team is dedicated to creating exceptional user interfaces and championing users at each stage of the development process. The commercial and delivery team is dedicated to building strong partnerships with their 30 or so clients. They translate commercial goals into tangible outputs, manage multiple concurrent value streams, balance project resources and maintain high quality communication.
Why is the workplace appropriate?
The bright, sunny space helps foster collaboration, and is an inviting space meaning some people do choose to work more than their minimum hybrid days from the office. The team loves the balance between quiet working and collaboration space. For clients, it’s an inspiring place to visit with comfortable meeting spaces and a chance to meet the people behind the work.
The team are even starting to use the space to host external events – like the Umbraco Newcastle meetup series, which began in April 2023.
Who works there?
The majority of Shout’s 50 plus workforce is based out of the HQ, with engineering, UX and testing teams able to collaborate in real time. The company’s commercial and client services teams are also in the building. Roles include:
- Senior leadership team (CEO, CTO, CCO, COO, Creative Director, Head of Engineering, Service Delivery Manager)
- Server-side, client side and full stack engineers
- Mobile engineers
- QA analysts
- Digital strategists, client partners, Project managers, and Client support
- Sales & marketing
- Business admin
- UX designers, user researchers
- Content & creative design
