National Stottie Week returns with a free city-wide adventure to find Newcastle’s Lost Mini Stotties
More than 1,000 North East schoolchildren entered a competition to help create The Great Digital Stottie Trail, a new family-friendly experience celebrating the region’s baking heritage, culture and communities.
National Stottie Week will return from 10–16 August 2026 for its third and most ambitious year yet, with the launch of The Great Digital Stottie Trail: a free, app-based family adventure taking children and their families to some of Newcastle and Gateshead’s best-known cultural, historic and community venues with a bonus point at Si King’s PROPA at Sheepfolds Pen, Sunderland.
National Stottie Week was launched by Big River Bakery in 2024 to celebrate the iconic North East stottie and the generations of local people who have baked, bought, shared and come together to enjoy it.
The first two years were delivered on a shoestring budget and powered by sheer North East determination, with a simple but important ambition: to create something rooted in the region’s culture, heritage and communities that local people could feel proud of, participate in and celebrate together.
Earlier this year, Big River Bakery was awarded support from the Airbnb Best of British Fund, allowing the team to develop the celebration further and create The Great Digital Stottie Trail.
The trail, created by award-winning MAADIGITAL, a Gateshead-based digital and technology design studio, follows the adventures of Scotty and Dotty the Stotties, who have accidentally lost 20 mischievous Mini Stotties across Newcastle and Gateshead. Children throughout the North East are being called upon to help find them and save Stottie Week.
To create the Mini Stotties, Big River Bakery invited schools across the region to enter a special design competition. More than 1,000 entries were received, with children producing imaginative, colourful and proudly North Eastern designs.
Twenty winning designs have now been professionally digitised and will appear, alongside the winner’s names and school details, as the Lost Mini Stotties hidden along the trail.
When we started National Stottie Week in 2024, we didn’t have a big budget or a large events team, but we did have a huge amount of belief in the North East and in the importance of celebrating the things that belong to our region.
The stottie might look like a simple round loaf, but it carries so many memories. It reminds people of childhood, family kitchens, home baking, and bait boxes. It harks back to the hard-working days of the pits, shipyards and factories. It is part of our shared history. It is also about looking forward and celebrating everything that is great about the North East.
We wanted Stottie Week to give people something joyful and positive that they could join in with, wherever they came from and whatever their circumstances. Thanks to the Airbnb Best of British Fund, we have been able to enrich the week with a free digital trail that brings together children, families, schools, businesses, museums, cultural organisations and communities from across the region.
The Great Digital Stottie Trail will be accessed through a free smartphone app called Letsargo, which families will be able to download using a QR code. Posters displaying the QR code will be available at many participating trail locations from the beginning of National Stottie Week.
Once the app has been downloaded, families will be able to explore the city, locate the Lost Mini Stotties and unlock digital photo opportunities with Scotty and Dotty at selected locations.
The trail will also reveal stories and points of interest connected to the baking, milling, industrial and social history of Newcastle and the wider North East, helping children discover how flour, bread and the humble stottie have been woven into the life of the region across the centuries.
Children will also be able to take photographs of themselves with Scotty & Dotty at select locations through a phone – and Big River Bakery will be holding a competition with prizes for the most unusual and fun photos (details will be available on the website www.bigriverbakery.com)
Big River Bakery has teamed up with an extraordinary range of organisations and venues, including Fenwick, Theatre Royal Newcastle, Newcastle City Library, Seven Stories, Great North Museum: Hancock, Discovery Museum, Newcastle Central Station, The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, Staiths Café, St Mary’s Church in Gateshead, PROPA Sunderland, the Literary & Philosophical Society, Newcastle Cathedral, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle Castle, Grainger Market, Tyne and Wear Buildings Preservation Trust, Newcastle City Guides, Newcastle City Council and Big River Bakery, alongside other trail points and partners.
The digital trail will also include specially recorded voiceovers from Si King and actor Bill Ward, who have both lent their voices to help bring the stories, characters and heritage of the trail to life.
I’m delighted to be a part of the Big River Bakery Stottie Trail. As a North East lad myself, I know the legendary status The Stottie plays in all of our lives - big, round and full of good stuff - long live The Stottie
The response from schools was overwhelming. Receiving more than 1,000 Mini Stottie designs showed us just how much imagination, humour and local pride there is among North East children.
The winning designs are now part of the trail, so children will be able to visit the city and see characters created by pupils just like them. We hope every child who entered feels that they have helped to shape Stottie Week and that this celebration belongs to them too.
A WEEK FILLED WITH STOTTIE CELEBRATIONS
Alongside The Great Digital Stottie Trail, National Stottie Week will include a packed programme of family-friendly activities.
A special Stottie Express Bus, provided courtesy of Go North East, will take local children to a picnic and activity session at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.
Big River Bakery will also broadcast a free live online stottie-making workshop, giving people in the North East and around the world the opportunity to learn how to make the region’s famous bread.
Other activities will include a stottie walk, stottie hoying at Big River Bakery and free storytelling sessions at selected venues. A brand-new Scotty and Dotty story has been written especially for National Stottie Week and will be shared with children as part of the celebrations. Stottie Beer (launched in Stottie Week 2025) will also be available this year – a collaboration with Big River Bakery and Firebrick Brewery.
