On this day 10 years ago, we hosted our first ever event at a three-bedroom house on Shaftesbury Street in Stockton. A lot has changed since then. Enjoy the full story below from Auxiliary Artistic Director Liam Slevin.

“I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since our first event here in Teesside, over in Stockton, on 11 Shaftsbury Street.

I came to the Tees Valley with Anna Byrne, and together we built Auxiliary from the ground up. When I first arrived, like many immigrants trying to get into the workforce, I started working for Deliveroo. This was before the explosion of e-bikes, so everything was done on a good old-fashioned pedal-powered bicycle. I was working in Middlesbrough at first, but when they expanded to Stockton, I could log in from home. I would sit at my desk, dressed head to toe in not quite lycra but definitely cycling gear, shorts and with my helmet on and my Deliveroo bag ready on my back, just waiting for my phone to ping.

In between deliveries, we were building the Auxiliary. I would be prepping ideas, setting up meetings and trying to get the residency off the ground. Looking back, I am not even sure which was the side job. At the time I was making about £70 a week, so it was a very small amount of money, and we ran the residency voluntarily for the first few years putting all of our savings into - which wasn’t much mind, but it was still all in.

That same period led into our first event at Auxiliary, One Night Stand, with local artists including Thomas Tyler and Stephen Irving. In the months leading up to it, I had been in the building constantly, renovating and cleaning, but I had barely spent any evenings there. It was early summer, so the light lingered outside.

When the event started, we quickly realised that some of the rooms, including the toilets, had no lighting at all. By chance, Steve had a bulb in his car, one of those rotating disco-style party lights that screws straight into a fitting, so we used that in one of the rooms. The building still had its green shutters, as the windows had not yet been replaced. They were perforated, so as night fell the cold air came straight through. The place was still set up as an HMO, with two cookers in the kitchen, so we turned them on for heat. It was ridiculous but it's what we had!

It also happened to be the day Middlesbrough Football Club were promoted to the Premiership in 2016 with a 1-1 draw with Brighton. The evening was fairly quiet at first, but after the match there was a sudden influx of people, all full of, let's call it energy, from the result. Everyone was sharing videos of the fountain in Middlesbrough overflowing with beer foam, proper wild scenes.

About two years in running the residency, we received our first bit of funding and began paying ourselves £400 a month. At the time, it felt like an extraordinary shift, finally earning money from something we cared about. But when we were expecting a child, it became clear that even that was not enough to cover childcare. That was the point where we had to rethink everything, how we worked, and how we valued our time.”