Dan Burn to start biggest Great North Run

Newcastle United captain Dan Burn will be the official starter for the 2026 AJ Bell Great North Run on Sunday (September 13).

The England defender will set a record 63,000 runners on their way from Newcastle to South Shields for the 45th anniversary event.

The anniversary celebrations got under way in Newcastle city centre on Friday morning, where race founder Sir Brendan Foster was joined by North East Mayor Kim McGuinness, elite runner Eilish McColgan, reigning Great North Run champions Alex Mutiso and Sheila Chepkirui, and North East runner Calum Johnson.

Good luck to everyone taking part – the Great North Run is always a special weekend for the region, whether you’re running, volunteering or cheering from the sidelines.

And if you’re making a weekend of it, don’t forget there’s also a busy Great North Run Fringe programme of events to enjoy.

Masterpiece in good company

Faces from the North East’s past have joined a painting by portrait artist Pierre Mignard on display on Tyneside as part of the National Gallery Masterpiece Tour.

Mignard’s The Marquise de Seignelay (1691) will be at South Shields Museum & Art Gallery until November 7.

The Masterpiece Tour brings works from the national collection to audiences across the UK and South Shields is one of just five partner venues selected to take part.

The painting is accompanied by a selection of portraits from the collections of North East Museums. Read more

I Fought The Law wins at National Television Awards

North East-shot drama I Fought The Law picked up the Best New Drama prize at this week’s National Television Awards.

Starring Sheridan Smith, the ITV series told the true story of Ann Ming and her long fight to change the law after her daughter Julie Hogg was murdered.

Her 17-year fight led to the abolition of the 800-year-old double jeopardy law, allowing people acquitted of serious crimes to be retried when compelling new evidence emerges.

The drama, which was supported by North East Screen, was filmed on Teesside, where the real events took place.

Yourcodenameis:milo announce Sunderland date

North East alt-rock band Yourcodenameis:milo will play Sunderland’s Pop Recs on December 13 as part of a rare four-date UK tour.

The band emerged to considerable acclaim in the early 2000s, winning Best British Newcomer at the 2004 Kerrang! Awards and releasing records produced by Steve Albini and Flood. They toured with the likes of Biffy Clyro and Enter Shikari before going on hiatus in 2007.

They returned in 2023 for two sold-out shows at The Cluny in Newcastle in aid of the Bobby Robson Foundation and an appearance at ArcTanGent Festival.

The December tour also takes in London, Manchester and Glasgow. Tickets are on sale now.

Castle weekend puts Northumbrian pipes centre stage

Alnwick Castle will celebrate one of the region’s most distinctive musical traditions with a weekend dedicated to Northumbrian smallpipes on September 19 and 20.

Visitors can have a go at playing the pipes with musician Ednie Wilson on Saturday, before a traditional hornpipe clog dancing demonstration with Duke’s Piper Andrew Davison.

On Sunday, more than 50 musicians will gather in the Guest Hall for an afternoon performance.

The weekend will also feature talks exploring the tradition of the Duke’s Piper and a special exhibition drawing on material from the Castle Archives.

Anton Du Beke brings Ballet Shoes to Sunderland

Strictly Come Dancing star Anton Du Beke will lead the cast of Ballet Shoes when it comes to Sunderland Empire from November 30 to December 4, 2027.

Du Beke will play Great Uncle Matthew and Fidolia at selected performances of the acclaimed production when it tours next year, adapted by Kendall Feaver from Noel Streatfeild’s much-loved novel.

The show enjoyed sold-out runs at the National Theatre in 2024 and 2025. Tickets will be on general sale at 10am on September 24.

Four writers, four new ideas for the North East

Four North East writers and artists have been selected to develop new projects spanning theatre, film, poetry and publishing as part of the Creative Associates Programme

New Writing North, working with Live Theatre and Tyneside Cinema, will support the Creative Associates programme projects over the next six months, with funding from the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority’s Create Talent programme.

Actor and writer Christina Berriman Dawson will become writer-in-residence at Live Theatre, developing RAW, inspired by the underground free party movement in Newcastle and Northumberland.

Newcastle writer-director Johnny Massahi joins Tyneside Cinema as screenwriter-in-residence, where he will finish his debut feature film, currently titled Iranian Pornographer.

Newcastle poet Ilisha Thiru Purcell will use her New Writing North residency to create a sequence of poems in response to and in conversation with the work of Julia Darling.

The fourth Creative Associate is Northumberland-based writer and artist Stevie Ronnie, who will develop and pilot a new model for producing artist books, bringing writers directly into the design and making process. Read more.

The Alnwick Garden unwraps its plans for Christmas

Visitors to The Alnwick Garden will be able to explore illuminations across both the Garden and Lilidorei when its Winter Light Trail returns in November.

Running from November 20 to January 3, the trail will feature illuminations across both The Garden and Lilidorei, alongside festive soundscapes, installations and interactive elements.

Father Christmas will also return to his Lilidorei grotto, with breakfast events on selected December dates. Other events include a Christmas Fair, festive afternoon teas, wreath making and a festive menu at The Treehouse. Tickets are on sale now.

Northern Lights turns back time for Christmas

Sticking with the subject of winter lights, Newcastle’s Northern Lights trail has revealed what visitors can expect when it returns to Leazes Park from November 20 to December 31.

This year’s mile-long trail is themed A Christmas Time Machine, with giant Slinky, kaleidoscope and Rubik’s Cube-inspired installations among the attractions.

The historic bandstand will become a 1960s-inspired Lava Lamp Lane, while young patients from the Great North Children’s Hospital are helping create a giant Christmas catalogue featuring their drawings of classic toys. Tickets on sale here.

The Light switches seasons

There’s more illumination on the way in Durham, as the city’s newest cultural venue, The Light, has unveiled its autumn and winter programme.

Thursday evenings will feature live music, creative workshops, talks, a book club and a monthly social for the North East’s creative community, while families are catered for with half-term activities and regular Sensory Saturdays.

The venue is also launching After Dark, bringing together exhibitions, music, performance, food and installations on the first Friday of each month, with artists Tine Bech and Liz West and Neon Workshops curating the first three events.

More than 5,000 people visited The Light during its opening week. More information and booking here.

£10,000 boost for South Shields arts project

A community arts project bringing together residents in two South Shields wards has secured almost £10,000 to continue its work.

These Streets, commissioned by The Cultural Spring and led by artist and producer Louie Ingham, has been working with people in Simonside and Rekendyke to create art, music, food and events rooted in the two communities.

A £9,903 grant from the Community Foundation North East’s Belong North East Fund will allow the project to continue for another three months, including a new programme of weekly sessions at St Jude’s Church Hall in Rekendyke. Read more

North East theatres make their mark beyond the stage

Two Newcastle theatres have been named as finalists in the inaugural Great British Theatres Awards.

Live Theatre and Gosforth Civic Theatre are both shortlisted in the Great Public Space category, which recognises venues which have made imaginative use of spaces beyond their auditoriums.

Live Theatre is nominated for its community garden, while Gosforth Civic Theatre is recognised for its café. They are up against Polka Children’s Theatre in London and Storyhouse in Chester.

The awards have been launched by Theatres Trust as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, with nearly 200 nominations received from theatres, cultural organisations and communities across the country.

Winners will be announced at Central Hall Westminster on November 2, when an overall Great British Theatre 2026 will also be chosen.

Restaurant Week is back on the menu in North Tyneside

North Tyneside Restaurant Week will return from October 5-11, with restaurants, pubs and cafés across the borough offering set-price menus at £15, £20 and £25.

The Gibraltar Rock in Tynemouth is among the first venues confirmed, alongside Turknaz in Whitley Bay, The Salthouse in Cullercoats, Kaycho in Wallsend and The Sportsman in North Shields.

More participating venues are due to be announced in the coming weeks. More info on the website.

In related news, the Great North Run Fringe programme includes a special edition of NE1 Restaurant Week, running (sorry) until September 14.

Future plans for Durham World Heritage Site

A new management plan for Durham Castle and Cathedral is set to go before councillors next week.

Durham County Council’s Cabinet will be asked to endorse the vision and objectives of the World Heritage Site Management Plan, which has been drawn up following public consultation.

It sets out four areas of focus – conservation, sharing, regeneration and research – and could also feed into wider regeneration and tourism plans for Durham.

The castle and cathedral became the first UK cultural heritage site to join UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1986.

A mural honouring the man who brought some of the biggest names in rock and folk music to Sunderland has been unveiled on the city’s Music Wall of Fame.

Promoter Geoff Docherty, who died in March aged 86, was celebrated outside The Fire Station on Thursday evening, ahead of a sold-out memorial show held in his honour.

The mural was created through a partnership between illustrator Kathryn Robertson, The Fire Station and Sunderland Music City.

Over a career spanning decades, Geoff played a significant role in Sunderland’s live music scene, promoting concerts by Led Zeppelin, The Who, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Free and Family.

His shows at venues including The Bay, Locarno, Mayfair and the Mecca helped establish Sunderland as an important stop on the UK touring circuit and introduced a generation of local music fans to artists who would go on to become some of the biggest names of their era.

The mural was unveiled by Val Brown (née Clark), Norma McAlpine (née Clark) and Hilary Stevens (née Watson), three of the women Geoff immortalised as the “four freakers” in his memoir, A Promoter’s Tale.

The group were regulars at Geoff’s concerts but also played their own part in Sunderland’s musical story, sharing discoveries and recommending artists for him to book.

Among them was Quintessence, who subsequently played in Sunderland on their recommendation. Geoff also recalled how the women once encountered Pink Floyd in a van outside The Bay and were invited to listen to unreleased music following a performance.

Speaking at the unveiling, Val said: “I’m honoured to have been asked to say a few words as we add Geoff Docherty, who all of us remember so fondly, to Sunderland’s Music Wall of Fame.

“Geoff deserves to be remembered and honoured for bringing live music to our city so that a whole generation came to love live music. It was music written and performed with passion by many of the most creative musicians of their time.”

Procol Harum guitarist Mick Grabham also paid tribute, saying: “A richly deserved commemoration. Geoff’s enthusiasm and tenacity were a winning combination, and I’ll be eternally grateful for the significant part Geoff played in the early formative years of my playing career.”

Geoff joins a growing roll call of Sunderland musicians and music figures recognised on the city’s Music Wall of Fame including Dave Stewart, Kenickie, Field Music and Ruth-Ann Boyle.

Hexham Abbey Festival is an old stager among North East cultural festivals but it’s a sprightly one, as you’ll see by the programme for this year’s 74^th edition which runs from September 23-27.

It might seem odd to begin at the end and with an event that’s due to take place not in the historic abbey but in the Forum Cinema nearby.

But the eye is drawn to the screening on the 27^th (it’s a Sunday, 2pm) of South: Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Glorious Epic of the Antarctic.

The recently restored film, telling of Ernest Shackleton’s daring but ill-fated 1914 expedition to Antarctica, is billed as one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration.

It owes everything to the footage of pioneering photographer and film-maker Frank Hurley who was with Shackleton’s team and recorded both the landscape’s stark beauty and the endeavours of the crew who miraculously survived.

The same can’t be said of their vessel, Endurance, which became frozen in pack ice and eventually sank (its wreckage, remarkably intact, was found on the seabed in 2022).

The pioneering documentary will be shared with Hexham Abbey Festival customers with accompaniment by pianist Jonny Best, founding artistic director of Northern Silents.

Tickets from the Forum Cinema or call (01434) 601144. As you’d expect, they have been selling fast.

The festival opens on the Wednesday with the combined Hexham Abbey choirs singing choral evensong (6pm, no ticket required).

On the Thursday (1pm) guitarist Ian Watt will give a lunchtime recital in the abbey’s north transept of music from the UK and South America, including the dramatic La Catedral by Paraguayan composer Agustin Barrios Mangoré (1885 to 1944).

Another highlight comes in the evening on the same day (7.30pm) when classical pianist Danny Driver performs Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

The Friday lunchtime attraction (1pm) is Singing Truth to Power in which Oskar Cox-Jensen, Nancy Kerr and Vic Gammon will celebrate songs that have given voice to protest and dissent in the North East and beyond

Returning to the festival in the evening (September 25, 7.30pm) will be the singers of APOLLO5 with Crossings, described as a choral journey along the pilgrim route from Canterbury to Rome.

The group last performed here in 2022.

Billed as the festival centrepiece (Saturday, September 26, 7.30pm) is the concert by Hexham Abbey Festival Chorus & Orchestra featuring Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Mass in C.

David Murray will direct and the soloists will be Kate Symonds-Joy (mezzo-soprano), Robert Anthony Gardiner (tenor) and Andrew Greenan (bass).

Pianist Martin Roscoe will also perform Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23, ‘Appasionata’.

Sunday’s festival programme will begin at 10am with festival choral eucharist featuring the abbey’s combined choirs (no ticket required).

The festival finale (7.30pm) is in the hands of the celebrated Ayoub Sisters – Laura on violin, Sarah on cello - who celebrate their Arab heritage and Scottish upbringing through folk melodies from Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and, of course, Scotland.

Guest programmer Svend-Einar McEwan-Brown said that as a schoolboy in the 1980s Hexham Abbey Festival had provided him with many musical experiences.

“To me, this is what festivals do best – give us happy and strong memories of special performances in a special place.

“Hexham Abbey certainly is that and I am delighted to have the chance to offer a nicely eclectic mix of things this year.”

Tickets can be booked via the Hexham Abbey Festival website or by calling the Queen’s Hall on (01434) 652477.

A seagull was pacing disconcertedly outside Culture House on Wednesday morning.

“Flip me,” it seemed to be thinking. “How do you get into this place?”

I was thinking along similar lines. A few days ahead of the official opening, the doors were shut tight as a clam and resistant to all forms of two-legged approach.

Well, you never know with automatic doors.

In my experience, some fly open at the hint of a distant footstep while others require near nose-to-glass contact. One pair I know favours the latter but then opens outwards, requiring sudden evasive action.

Being excluded gave me and the seagull (possibly) time to consider first impressions of this £27 million addition to Sunderland’s ‘cultural quarter’, which has seen the Keel Square area dramatically transformed.

Against the nearby Empire theatre and the Peacock and Dun Cow pubs, flamboyant reminders of a bygone age, this modern FaulknerBrowns creation is large, boxy and angular, with expanses of pale brick.

Transparent walls of glass (I’m thinking Newcastle City Library and National Glass Centre) have perhaps had their day.

The purpose of Culture House, with its subtle signage, is rather opaque although that might change when it opens to a curious public and new restaurant Blacks Corner shines a welcoming light.

Via a phone call and a discreet buzzer, I left the seagull pacing and gained entry – there to meet Leanne Littlewood, appointed as Culture House director early in 2023 before spades broke ground.

Her smile of greeting couldn’t disguise the fact that here was a woman with a million things to do.

“One of the technicians said I’m naggier than his wife at present,” she confided cheerfully.

The delayed project had attracted criticism, she acknowledged, and some of it fairly robust.

But it’s always the way. Private Eye’s architecture critic once described Gateshead’s new international centre for music as like a giant slug while one of the more jocular opponents of The Angel of the North suggested it be painted lime green.

FaulknerBrowns describe Culture House as “a modern library, envisaged to provide a welcoming, inspiring space for the people of Sunderland to read, write and create”.

Leanne said: “You don’t judge a book by its cover so I’d like people to reserve judgement until they see what’s inside.”

It was always intended to be something different, she added. “There are curiosities all over the building.”

I was about to find out that she wasn’t wrong.

If it were a book, I’m inclined to think Culture House could be a bestseller - not there’s any charge for admission.

Once inside, the space opens into a giant atrium with seating arranged round a corkscrew staircase and with surrounding screens displaying digital artworks.

There were three, said Leanne, each with a different theme: glass, water and trees. All were the work of Marshmallow Laser Feast, a London-based but internationally known art collective.

Further exploration would reveal technology all over the building but this first sight is spectacular.

Two exhibition spaces also reside on the ground floor: the Focus Gallery and the Vision Gallery.

The inaugural attraction in the latter is Geist, a shimmering sculpture by artists Harriet Lumby and Alan Hayes who collaborate as This Is Loop.

An information board asks: “Do you know that billions of tiny particles are passing through your body right now?”

That’s quite a thing to consider if you’ve just popped in to change your library books. But already you’ll be getting the sense that this is no ordinary library.

Those ‘ghost particles’, I now know, are neutrinos, mysterious building blocks of the universe, and the artists illustrate their existence with this artwork displayed like a flashy caged beast.

To demonstrate its interactive qualities, Leanne approached and it went blue. Others, she said, might trigger a different response.

Leanne led me up to the first of the three upper floors, all arranged round that epic central atrium.

We walked along broad corridors decorated with interesting displays and providing access to a variety of rooms and spaces.

First floor attractions, Leanne said, were geared towards young people and families having fun.

Here you’ll find The Den, a spacious area for reading and play. It’s wonderfully welcoming with its floor-based games, dressing up clothes and array of places to sit or sprawl.

Best of all, if you fear for the future of books as technology powers on, is the enormous variety of them here, all seductively displayed.

Leanne is a book fan and it’s evident throughout the building that they’re regarded as the equals of all the whizzy gizmos.

“Really everything here is about trying to make connections with people,” she said.

“It was important we consulted widely so we talked to people who said they didn’t use libraries. What was stopping them?

“Can’t see the wood for the trees, some of them said. So we’ve used shelves not for storage but for display (in The Den and elsewhere, they’re arranged with front cover rather than spine to the fore).

“It’s better to have 20,000 books used regularly than 200,000 that aren’t.”

Alongside the children’s books is a play area which promises FUN (my capitals). It resembles the set of a pre-schoolers’ TV show. There’s even a colourful table top game with balls and pegs and holes but absolutely no rules, imagination being key.

Culture House designers invited young people to engage with the planning process through the Minecraft video game. Whether that explains the look of the place, I don’t know.

But what the respondents wanted (of course) was access to computers so in the engagement studio, Domain, there are plenty of them, all equipped with Adobe creative packages.

Workshops will be run here, potentially generating digital creations that can be shown on the Culture House big screens. “This is about people being creative,” said Leanne. If you want a form filled in, head elsewhere.

The Exchange is the place for films or talks. It’s to be the base of the Sunderland Shorts Film Festival, which, incidentally, has one of the six micro-exhibition spaces located across the building.

Others have been taken up by North East Screen, Seven Stories, Music Connects Sunderland, the Empire Theatre and Kielder Observatory.

Prominence is also given to the creations emanating from community workshops initiated by The Cultural Spring.

I was shown the green screen room, an important introduction to the film-making business, and the splendid Immersion Gallery whose walls can be transformed by digital artworks, as in the atrium.

Leanne envisaged pilates and wellbeing sessions here and said Theatre Space North East are to present their panto here with digital backdrops.

On the second floor the Audrey Amiss exhibition was being assembled behind the glass walls of the new Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art and I saw meeting rooms and one of the two highly professional looking podcasting studios.

Leanne explained podcasting in a way I hadn’t heard before.

“More and more young people sit in their bedrooms and ‘talk’ to people on the internet but there’s nobody actually in front of them.

“This is a step towards having a dialogue. It’s so important that young people learn how to discuss things and perhaps to disagree.

“We hope that with a microphone in front of them and given a bit of space, the world will come alive for them. I really hope they’ll have a go and feel empowered.”

On the third floor I’m shown The Sky Garden, an attractive space open to the elements which an Indian summer will show to best advantage, and The Record which is the place for local studies.

“We’ve digitised 50,000 documents over the last couple of years,” said Leanne.

In the Inventors Lab I met the inspirational Dominic Willcox who has built on the success of his Little Inventors initiative to introduce Joy Lab, a widening of his mission to promote “inventing for happiness”.

He demonstrated a nifty device for preventing a cat wrecking your wallpaper invented by 56-year-old Pauline, from Hebburn (turned into reality by model-maker Chloe Rodham).

Among other amusing inventions on show were a teacher survival belt, a hug chair with big arms and a machine for dispensing stickers inspiring positive thoughts.

More than 1,000 local people rose to the challenge of inventing something that could bring a moment’s happiness to someone’s day. These were the winners, brought into being by professional makers.

In a large room, meanwhile, a group of people who appeared to have taken inspiration from Joy Lab could be seen laughing and gesticulating around a conference table.

Leanne poked her head in to say she was glad they were having fun. Under discussion, she told me afterwards, was this autumn’s Northern Children’s Book Festival. Should be a hoot!

Leanne said there had been various test events with people invited in to use different parts of the building.

The reaction had always been wow!

A Middlesbrough lass, she landed the Culture House job (which brings with it the role of head of cultural services) after 17 years in culture-related roles in her home town.

She said she had been won over by Sunderland’s ambition in putting culture at the heart of regeneration and creating Keel Square. “I don’t think anybody has been doing it in quite the same way so it seemed an opportunity.”

Clearly she has had no regrets so far.

“The shine of this place never comes off for me,” she said.

“I tend to see it through the eyes of everyone who’s seeing it for the first time because I’m reminded of how flipping brilliant it is.”

I’m guessing that might be the reaction of many more people when Culture House opens at long last on Saturday (September 12).

A community arts project bringing together residents in two South Shields wards has secured almost £10,000 to continue its work.

These Streets, commissioned by The Cultural Spring and led by artist and producer Louie Ingham, has been working with people in Simonside and Rekendyke to create art, music, food and events rooted in the two communities.

A £9,903 grant from the Community Foundation North East’s Belong North East Fund will allow the project to continue for another three months, including a new programme of weekly sessions at St Jude’s Church Hall in Rekendyke.

The first phase of These Streets has involved three projects developed with local residents.

Ride and Seek is an audio artwork made with young people and other residents, featuring poetry from Simonside spoken word artist Tahmina Ali and music and sound co-created with Calum Howard and Martin Trollope. There are hopes the finished track can be installed on the Number 18 bus.

If Buses Be the Food Of Love, Hop On has combined cooking and creative workshops aboard the Key Community Bus, while From Mine to Yours has offered a programme of artistic workshops designed to develop residents’ creative skills.

Louie said: “The first phase of our project has gone so well, and this new funding enables a regular weekly project at St Jude’s Church Hall in Rekendyke to be developed.

“We’ve established some great relationships and connections – this is a place full of untapped talent and creative energy, and we’d like to build on creative cohesion within the wards.”

The next phase begins on October 12, with the These Streets community company meeting at St Jude’s on Monday evenings from 5pm to 7pm.

A chef will work with participants to prepare a two-course meal using readily available ingredients, while creative sessions will be led by musicians, illustrators, writers and ceramic artists.

There will be a different focus each week, with people of all abilities encouraged to take part and the group working towards a semi-open mic night in December.

For more information about the groups, email Louie on louie.ingham@theculturalspring.org.uk

Faces from the North East’s past have joined a painting by portrait artist Pierre Mignard on display on Tyneside as part of the National Gallery Masterpiece Tour.

Mignard’s The Marquise de Seignelay (1691) will be at South Shields Museum & Art Gallery until November 7.

The Masterpiece Tour brings works from the national collection to audiences across the UK and South Shields is one of just five partner venues selected to take part.

The painting is accompanied by a selection of portraits from the collections of North East Museums.

Among those keeping Mignard’s masterpiece company is Dolly Peel (1782–1857), the South Shields woman who protected sailors from being press-ganged into the Royal Navy. After her husband and son were forced into service during the Napoleonic Wars, Peel stowed away aboard their ship and, when discovered, was put to work tending sick and wounded sailors.

Other local faces include Newcastle twins Winifred and Leonora Reid, painted aged nine in 1920 by Thomas Bowman Garvie, a Morpeth-born artist whose subjects also included Lord Percy and Lord Armstrong; and South Shields-born poet, novelist and playwright James Kirkup (1918–2009), who wrote more than 45 books and spent 30 years living and teaching in Japan. Ralph Hedley, renowned for his paintings of everyday life on Tyneside, is represented by A Girl in Costume Knitting.

The exhibition also features James Ward RA’s portrait of Michael Bryan (1757–1821), the Newcastle-born art dealer, collector and art historian; Charles Goldsborough Anderson’s portrait of his wife Mary Alice Moberly, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1900; and Cowan Dobson’s portrait of Lady Hélène Paris Chapman, who lived in Harton and Cleadon and played a prominent role in South Shields civic life.

South Shields previously hosted a Claude Monet painting from January-March as part of the Masterpiece Tour.

The new exhibition, named Mignard: The Power of Posing, explores the power of portraiture and how artists use pose, clothing, expression and setting to communicate identity, status and personality.

Visitors are invited to look beyond the surface of a portrait and discover the stories hidden behind an artwork.

Alongside the exhibition is a collection of original poetry inspired by The Marquise de Seignelay (1691). The works were created by young people from the New Writing North Writers’ Group as part of a sensory writing competition celebrating the arrival of the masterpiece.

The exhibition also features an interactive Selfie Station, where visitors can explore a wardrobe of costumes and accessories and transform themselves into a masterpiece.

Keith Merrin, director of North East Museums, said: “We are delighted to welcome another masterpiece into South Shields Museum & Art Gallery as part of the National Gallery Masterpiece Tour.

“This partnership gives people across the North East the opportunity to experience an internationally significant work of art on their doorstep.”

When we spoke to North East playwright Alison Carr last week ahead of the premiere of her new play All At Sea, she mentioned there was some interesting news on the way.

She wasn’t kidding. The writer has been awarded a prestigious Peter Shaffer Commission to develop a major new play with Newcastle’s Unfolding Theatre.

The £7,294 award, administered by the National Theatre in collaboration with the Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation, will support That Friday Feeling (but Friday is the Apocalypse), a darkly funny play about closures, endings and what we leave behind.

Set in the offices of the London Gazette in the near future, it follows the clerks responsible for officially recording company closures as the world around them begins to shut down too.

Businesses and jobs are disappearing, but so are species, lakes and coral reefs. Digital systems are failing and the people left behind carry on documenting it all – at least for as long as they can.

It’s not entirely unfamiliar territory for Alison. Her comedy The Last Quiz Night on Earth also contemplated the end of the world, albeit from the rather different surroundings of a pub quiz. That Friday Feeling approaches the apocalypse from another reassuringly ordinary setting: the office.

“I’m fascinated by closures because they’re everywhere, but we don’t always talk about what happens afterwards,” said Alison.

“A business closes, a shop disappears, a job ends, a species goes extinct – and somehow life carries on. I wanted to explore that huge idea through the very ordinary world of office workers doing their jobs. It’s a story about endings, but I hope it’s also funny, warm and full of life.”

The play has already brought together something of a North East creative supergroup.

It began with a conversation between Unfolding Theatre and actor and former brewer Carl Kennedy about what it means to close a business. Kennedy is also a member of long-running North East improv troupe The Suggestibles.

A subsequent research and development week brought together Unfolding’s artistic director Annie Rigby, Alison, Carl, designer Imogen Cloët, actor Karen Traynor and Field Music’s David Brewis, who is sound designer and performer on the project.

It was during that development period that the team discovered company closures are formally recorded in the London Gazette – providing the jumping-off point for Alison’s imagined office at the end of the world.

As the play progresses, the mundane and the apocalyptic increasingly collide. The billionaires and tech bros have left for space, desks and filing cabinets are being dismantled for fuel and spare parts, and someone will eventually have to decide whether to stay behind to file the final notice: the closure of the Gazette itself.

Annie said: “Alison has an incredible ability to take enormous ideas and make them feel funny and human. With this new work, we’re interested in closure in all its forms – and what we do when the things we thought were permanent turn out not to be.

“This is a brilliant opportunity to champion one of the North East’s most exciting writers on a national platform. We’re delighted to be developing this work with Alison and to see where this extraordinary idea can take us.”

The Peter Shaffer Commission, named in honour of the Equus and Amadeus playwright, supports the development of larger-scale original plays with three or more characters. Seven commissions are awarded annually, including five through partnerships with regional theatres and companies.

Unfolding Theatre plans to develop and premiere That Friday Feeling (but Friday is the Apocalypse) in the North East before exploring opportunities for a national tour.

Meanwhile, Alison’s All At Sea opens at Live Theatre, Newcastle on September 24, running until October 10 before transferring to Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre from October 16-31.

Four North East writers and artists have been selected to develop new projects spanning theatre, film, poetry and publishing as part of the Creative Associates Programme

New Writing North, working with Live Theatre and Tyneside Cinema, will support the Creative Associates programme projects over the next six months, with funding from the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority’s Create Talent programme.

Actor and writer Christina Berriman Dawson will become writer-in-residence at Live Theatre, developing RAW, inspired by the underground free party movement in Newcastle and Northumberland.

The work will draw on rave culture to explore community, freedom, identity and politics, including the impact of the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill on the movement.

“Bringing this production to Live Theatre will be a leap in the dark for both of us. It will push at the walls of the venue,” said Christina.

“Live Theatre and I have been building a creative relationship for several years and have both been looking for the right project to cement a partnership.”

Jack McNamara, Live’s artistic director, added: “We can’t wait to welcome Christina and her talent into Live Theatre. She is a creative force who - through her work as a performer- understands writing from the inside.’

Newcastle writer-director Johnny Massahi joins Tyneside Cinema as screenwriter-in-residence, where he will finish his debut feature film, currently titled Iranian Pornographer.

The film follows an Iranian immigrant navigating the asylum system in the North East following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, who is pushed into underground employment as a pornographer and begins to lose his grip on reality.

“Tyneside Cinema has been a staple in my life for as long as I can remember, it has been a sanctuary, a film school and everything in between,” said Johnny.

“To be able to work here as a screenwriter is honestly a dream come true, a real full circle moment.”

Nic Greenan, CEO, Tyneside Cinema, said: “Johnny represents the exceptional creative talent emerging from the North East. We’re proud to support him as he develops this powerful new project and to be part of his next chapter as a writer and filmmaker.”

Newcastle poet Ilisha Thiru Purcell will use her New Writing North residency to create a sequence of poems in response to and in conversation with the work of Julia Darling.

This year marks 70 years since Darling’s birth and just over 20 years since her death. Ilisha will also lead writing workshops exploring her work.

“Darling’s work has great personal importance to me and getting the opportunity to immerse myself in her writing is something that I am very grateful for and excited about,” she said.

Anna Disley, executive director (programme and impact), New Writing North, said: “Ilisha is very talented young poet and is inspired by Julia’s fierce love for the city of Newcastle, her embrace of the role of poetry in everyday life and as a pioneer of creative writing in health.”

The fourth Creative Associate is Northumberland-based writer and artist Stevie Ronnie, who will develop and pilot a new model for producing artist books, bringing writers directly into the design and making process.

“This residency is an amazing opportunity to take a risk and realise a project that has been gestating for many years,” he said.

“The publishing landscape for writers is evolving and consequently finding new ways of funding, making, and distributing books feels vitally important.”

Sarra Scougall, skills project manager, North East Mayoral Strategic Authority, said: “We are proud to fund New Writing North’s Creative Associates programme as part of our Create Talent programme, helping talented writers across the North East develop their creative practice, bring new ideas to life and contribute to our thriving creative sector.”

Newcastle artist Kema Kay is to create a new theatre work and help develop opportunities for Black creatives in the North East after securing more than £237,000 from Arts Council England.

The writer, rapper, actor and performer is at the centre of a Newcastle-based partnership with Northern Roots and Live Theatre which has been awarded £237,084 through the Theatre Breakthrough Fund.

The funding will support the creation of Kema’s new work, Bred and Roses, alongside a wider programme aimed at building infrastructure for Black-led theatre in the region.

That will include paid opportunities, mentoring and leadership pathways for Black, Asian and ethnically diverse creatives, with the partnership also looking to develop audiences for a broader range of stories and address underrepresentation within the theatre sector.

Kema, artistic director of the Northern Roots project, said: “Receiving the Theatre Breakthrough fund is an incredible moment for me and the communities I represent. This investment lets us build something bigger than one production.

“With Northern Roots and Live Theatre, we’re creating a programme that nurtures Northern Black talent, opens real opportunities for Black theatre makers, and brings audiences together to listen, learn and celebrate our voices.”

The Newcastle partnership is one of nine projects across the North of England sharing £2m through the Theatre Breakthrough Fund, which was launched by Arts Council England in December 2025 following the closure of Eclipse Theatre Company.

The fund was established to maintain investment in the kind of new theatre, touring and artist development for which Eclipse had been known, with Black, Asian and ethnically diverse theatre makers invited to propose ambitious new work and collaborations.

Across the nine successful projects, the investment is expected to support around 12 new theatre productions, eight commissions and approximately 200 performances, as well as creating jobs, partnerships and talent development opportunities.

Other recipients include Sheffield-based Roots Mbili, Bradford-based Kully Thiarai, Manchester theatre maker Darren Pritchard and Liverpool’s Keith Saha. Projects range from new touring productions to initiatives designed to strengthen opportunities for underrepresented theatre makers across the North.

Jen Cleary, Arts Council England’s Director North and Combined Arts, said the nine awards demonstrated “the rich talent and the wealth of ideas that exists across the North”, adding that the fund had also sparked new conversations with artists which the organisation was keen to develop further.

Leopard Print didn’t exist two years ago.

Its five members hadn’t met, let alone written songs, rehearsed or performed together. Now they are playing venues across the North East, recording new music, working towards their first EP and talking about touring.

The band came together through Gig Culture, a project developed and run by The Cultural Spring which used South Tyneside’s rich musical heritage to inspire and support a new generation of young musicians.

Running through 2024 and 2025, it brought young people together to write and perform their own material, develop their skills and learn more about the different ways they might make music part of their future.

When the project came to an end last autumn, Leopard Print faced an important test: could the band continue without the structure and support which had brought them together?

Their first independent booking, at Garden Lane in South Shields, provided the answer.

“It was nerve wracking when the programme finished and we knew we were going to have to find our own gigs,” they say. “But when we landed Garden Lane, we thought ‘yeah, we can do this’.”

Since then there have been gigs at The Cluny 2 and Little Buildings, new songs and recording sessions, as well as a grant from Sunday for Sammy and a performance on the charity’s stage at the Pride in Cobalt event in North Tyneside this summer.

“Having people believe in our little, nutty band and what we do is just insane and blew our minds,” they add.

What has happened since provides a pretty compelling argument for the value of Gig Culture – and for The Cultural Spring’s plans to bring it back.

Sharlize Sowden, Josie Littlewood, Billy, Lainie and Alice Taylor arrived at the project by different routes.

Sharlize wanted to write more music and work collaboratively; Josie was looking to meet musicians her own age; while Lainie had stopped playing for two or three years after arthritis in her hands became so bad she had to leave music college.

“We all slotted together like a big jigsaw piece,” they recall. “There’s something to be said about how smoothly we all worked together when we barely even knew each others’ names.”

Now they describe themselves as a family.

“We don’t think there’s any way that we all would have met outside of that programme and formed a band like this. We were all doing music, but we’d never crossed paths, even living so locally to one another.

“Gig Culture was absolutely life-changing for us; as was the team we had supporting us from The Cultural Spring.”

The Cultural Spring has spent more than a decade working across South Tyneside and Sunderland to increase engagement in arts and culture.

Gig Culture, funded through an Arts Council England project grant, was devised by the charity’s then development worker Catherine Scott around two strands: bringing young musicians together and exploring the considerable live music history on their doorstep.

Jimi Hendrix, Tom Jones and Eric Clapton were among the artists to perform in South Tyneside, while its pubs, clubs and halls provided generations of local people with their own gig memories.

The Cultural Spring began collecting those stories, working with local residents and South Tyneside Libraries to gather memories, photographs and other archive material from the borough’s musical past.

Then the material was put in front of young musicians.

Caroline Liversidge joined The Cultural Spring in summer 2024 and took over Gig Culture from Catherine as the first phase was coming together.

“The young people had formed their own bands,” she says. “They’d used the stories and the photographs and whatever else to sort of inspire their own songs.

“So for most of them, this was like the first time they’d ever tried anything to do with songwriting.”

With musician and producer Martin Trollope of HarbourMaster Productions, they worked through forming bands, writing original material and then performing it in front of an audience.

An early showcase at Hedworth Hall – remembered as The Golden Slipper, or Yellow Welly – was followed by performances at The Word and Sunderland’s Summer Streets Festival.

The heritage strand also found a permanent form. An exhibition at The Word brought together archive pictures and stories with music created through Gig Culture, while the young musicians recorded their songs for a specially produced vinyl.

On one side were their tracks; on the other, a podcast drawing on interviews with people who had contributed memories. Artist Emma Tominey worked with the young people and some of the original contributors to co-create the record sleeve.

As the project progressed, its focus increasingly moved towards what the young musicians might do next.

Caroline brought in local industry professionals to show that making a living from music doesn’t necessarily depend on becoming a chart-topping recording artist.

“It became a little bit more about sort of kind of employability,” she says.

“Yes, you can go and be a band, and that would be brilliant. Please go and do that. But also, these people are making money out of teaching, out of writing music for theatre productions, out of writing music for film productions or whatever.

“It was a really nice way of them all going, okay, like this isn’t just a pipe dream. If we don’t make it to the pyramid stage at Glastonbury, that’s not the end of the road.”

The Futureheads’ Ross Millard was among those who shared their experience, while performer Max Easter worked with the young musicians on stagecraft before a final performance at The County in South Shields.

By then, Caroline could see a marked difference.

“When I came on board, they’d just done their first gig basically together, and they were all obviously very proud of what they’d done.

“But by the end you could just tell they were so much more confident to get on stage and own it.”

Around a dozen young people were still involved by the end. Two bands, Leopard Print and Luminous, had stuck together, while others pursued solo work or joined different bands.

But Caroline says one of the most important outcomes had little to do with music.

“The biggest thing that I’ve learned is just the social benefit of it,” she says.

“It’s not just about them developing their skills and forming bands and being famous. It’s about them going, we’ve built a little family.”

She recalls one participant who had dropped out of school while struggling with anxiety and stress. By the end, he was starting to return to school and social situations, with his parents attributing the change to finding his “little tribe”.

Leopard Print’s Josie has also spoken publicly about the difference the project made to her.

Last autumn, she addressed a South Tyneside conference on hate crime and extremism, talking about her own experience of being bullied at school.

“Because of what I was going through at school I needed a safe space, an environment where I could be myself – and that is exactly what Gig Culture provided,” she said.

The Cultural Spring is now fundraising for a new iteration of Gig Culture, which it hopes could begin in April 2027.

Dependent on funding, the intention is to open the project more widely to 16 to 25-year-olds through two potential strands.

One would give complete beginners the chance to try different instruments with support from a regular tutor. The other would work with young people who already have some musical experience but want to develop their skills and find some direction.

There are also plans to invite members of the first cohort back as young mentors.

“We’ve been through this process, and here’s what we learned. This is where we are now,” Caroline says of what they could bring to a new group.

Meanwhile, Luminous are still together and gigging, although Caroline hears less from them these days – something she regards as a good sign.

“They’ve just sort of flown the nest,” she says. “Which you know is brilliant because it means that they’re independent. They don’t need us. Job done. You know that’s the goal is to make ourselves redundant.”

Leopard Print certainly aren’t hanging around waiting for anyone to tell them what to do next.

They now describe their music as “very energetic riot grrrl”, with influences stretching from country and metal to pop and indie rock. Their live performances incorporate dance routines, sketches and storylines.

They are recording with HarbourMaster and working towards that first EP, while their ambitions have expanded considerably since securing a paid gig felt like the big challenge.

“This question feels huge because a year ago we were just trying to get our first paid gig!” they say when asked where Leopard Print might be in another year or two.

“It would be amazing to get some opportunities to tour in a year or two and get to show our music to not only the North East scene, but all of the scenes across the UK (dare we say the entire world?).”

It’s never like this when I take the Ford Focus in for its irregular service or to get the dicky electrics checked.

Admirable though the local garage is in its own way, there’s no sultry allure about the place… not even in the body shop where you might feasibly expect a flash of toned torso.

That said, the garage in The Car Man, despite much rolling of tyres and macho spanner wielding, would probably not be your number one pitstop for a bit of rudimentary mechanics.

It’s a garage born of a Matthew Bourne fever dream… a simmering, sweaty place of sexual ambiguity and frenetic action punctuated by spells of lounging, flirting and occasional lacklustre fisticuffs.

In this American desert outpost where the population doesn’t top 400 and testosterone simmers under a hot sun, things are apt to boil over when fuel from Dino’s Diner is added to the mix.

The place is called Harmony and the delicious irony is underlined when a stranger swaggers onto the forecourt and Dino, cigar-chomping boss of garage and diner, takes him on.

With the sniggeringly suggestive ‘Man Wanted’ sign torn down, any suggestion of harmonious living goes with it.

Luca, the surly and opportunistic drifter, catches the eye of Lana, Dino’s attractive young wife, but he’s just as likely to plant a smacker on the lips of the lads. He swings both ways… but can pack a punch.

I’ve seen most Matthew Bourne creations and even – it must have been back in 2000, just before it premiered – sat in on a rehearsal of The Car Man down in London.

But I’ve never actually seen it performed until this week, it previously having swerved past me on its way to becoming one of the most popular productions in Bourne’s New Adventures canon.

Inspired by Bizet’s Carmen, an opera set in a 19^th Century Spanish cigarette factory, it, too, tells a sultry tale of sex and death, though transposed to a different century and place.

That the story unfolds gradually is no hardship.

Bourne’s dancers are always fabulously watchable, acting their socks off while stoking up the atmosphere with a succession of choreographed leaps and lifts, and making it all appear effortless.

Never mind socks. In one ‘ooh la la’ moment the lads throw off all their garments in order to take a shower.

Yes, this is one steamy production… and if the lads get hot, so do the lasses. Plenty of them reside in Harmony and one of them even wears denim and wields tools.

A car woman? The period may be the 1950s but this is 2026. And this is Matthew Bourne.

Roles tend to be shared around the New Adventures company but on Tuesday we got Will Bozier as Luca, Adam Galbraith as Dino, Ashley Shaw as Lana, Anna-Maria de Freitas as her sister Rita and Leonardo McCorkindale as the hired help, Angelo, whose misfortunes are at the heart of the tale.

But it’s an ensemble piece and all are brilliant… and I loved the scenes where crimes are re-enacted on stage as if in the heads of the guilty or accused.

Be prepared for ample gore to go with that flash of nudity, underlying the adult nature of the show.

The wonderfully erotic duets are masterclasses in strength and poise. And Bizet’s music, cleverly moulded by Terry Davies, emotes as expressively as the dancers on Lez Brotherston’s elaborate and versatile set.

At key points along the way, however, the music gives way to one noisy cicada, locating the action more effectively than any human score.

This is an exciting show and, in contradiction to everything I’ve written before, also undeniably cool.

The Car Man runs until Saturday, September 12. Tickets from the Theatre Royal box office.

Hello, and thanks for jumping in for another Curated Culture.

We’ve sifted through another busy couple of weeks on the North East cultural calendar and come up with our latest selection of things that we think are worth your time – from theatre and live music to comedy, exhibitions and screens of all sizes.

You’ll also find another helping of STILL SHOWING, for anything you might have missed first time around, while NOW BOOKING keeps an eye on what’s coming further down the line.

And, having broken the Christmas seal last week, our FESTIVE FORECAST is back with a few more seasonal suggestions for those already making plans. No pressure on the rest of you.

Further down, this week’s subscriber prize draw offers a pair of tickets to see the premiere run of North East playwright Alison Carr’s All At Sea at Live Theatre in Newcastle on September 26.

Thanks for your continued attention and support.

Sam (Wonfor) and Dave (Whetstone)
Professionally preoccupied with North East Culture

EXHIBITION: Baltic Open Submission
Where: Baltic, Gateshead
When: From September 19 to April 4, 2027
Bookings and info: baltic.art

The Open’s back, with all its inherent variety and idiosyncrasy, and this time the work of 79 artists – from more than 1,100 who submitted – will be on show.

It was selected by a panel comprising artists Laura Lancaster, Rachel Lancaster and Will Hughes, and Baltic assistant curators Rose McMurray and Rosie Coleman Collier.

In addition, 44 artists aged 11 to 17 will be represented in the first Youth Open Call section of the exhibition, supported by Fenwick and selected by Baltic’s Young Producers group and young artist Terox.

This third iteration of Baltic Open Submission, spanning painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, film and textiles, offers a platform to those who might not have exhibited publicly before.

Rose McMurray said: “It has been incredible to see the number of submissions we have received.

“It’s so inspiring to get a glimpse of the incredible talent we have here in the North East.”

Three young artists will also see their work displayed at Fenwick, Northumberland Street. They are 17-year-old Elizabeth, winner of the Fenwick Art Award, and runners-up Henry, aged 11, and Jason, 14.

A preview party at Baltic is scheduled for Friday, September 18 from 6pm. Tickets from the website.

MUSIC: Lindisfarne
Where: Queen’s Hall Hexham and The Fire Station, Sunderland
When: September 11 and 13, respectively
Bookings and info: lindisfarne.com

Lindisfarne are back on the road this autumn, bringing more than five decades of North East folk-rock history to shows in Hexham and Sunderland.

This five-piece line-up is fronted by founder member Rod Clements on vocals, mandolin and slide guitar, alongside long-time members of the band including Dave Hull-Denholm.

The set draws on a catalogue which has become firmly embedded in the region’s musical heritage, including Lady Eleanor, Meet Me on the Corner, Fog on the Tyne and Run for Home. The tour reaches Newcastle City Hall on December 19.

In related news, the next chapter of The Lindisfarne Story - featuring the band’s founding drummer, Ray Laidlaw and Billy Mitchell who served as lead singer from 1995-2003 - will be on the road in 2027 and has a boatload of North East dates booked in.

COMEDY/SCREEN: Super 8 Flicks with Viz’s Chris and Simon Donald
Where: Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle
When: September 15
Bookings and info: tynesidecinema.co.uk

Viz founders Chris and Simon Donald are putting their film tastes on the big screen for the latest instalment of Tyneside Cinema’s Super 8 Flicks.

The brothers will join comedian and actor Dave Johns to reveal the eight films they couldn’t live without, sharing stories and clips along the way and explaining why their choices have stuck with them.

Previous guests in the series have included Christopher Eccleston, Stewart Lee and Brenda Blethyn. The evening also raises money for Tyneside Talent Unit, which helps young people from working-class backgrounds find routes into the film and television industries.

BOOKS: Val McDermid and Jo Sharp
Where: Lit & Phil Library, Newcastle
When: Tuesday, September 22, 6pm
Bookings and info: litandphil.org.uk

Two for the price of one is generally considered a good deal and that’s what you get here, whether attending the talk or buying the book – the recently published novella This Door of the Seas.

Normally we’d describe McDermid and Sharp as leading lights in their respective fields, the former as acclaimed crime writer and the latter as Geographer Royal for Scotland (the first woman to hold the position).

But their talents come together in this book which came about because they are also partners in life.

It came out of research Sharp was doing into the first Geographer Royal, Sir Robert Sibbald.

Just after he was appointed, Scotland embarked on an ambitious but ill-fated mission to set up a trading colony in Panama. Sir Robert sent someone to keep an eye on things.

It was all news to Jo Sharpe and having told Val that it would make a brilliant story, Val suggested they write it together.

This Door of the Seas is the seventh book in Polygon’s Darkland Tales series in which Scottish authors reimagine moments from the country’s history and legend.

SCREEN: Forever Home
Where: Channel 5
When: From September 14
Info: channel5.com

The cast and crew of new Channel 5 drama, Forever Home assembled at Tyneside Cinema last week to get a preview of the series they spent months filming across Northumberland.

An adaptation of Graham Norton’s best-selling novel - with the action moved to Northumberland from County Cork - the six-part series centres around Carol (Amy Nuttall) who falls in love with an older man (Douglas Henshall) but finds their happiness cut short when he develops dementia and she discovers a body in the basement.

Produced by Vera veteran, Will Nicholson, the wider cast includes locals Denise Welch, Kevin Whately and Lewis Cope as well as Samantha Bond who were all based at Broomley Grange, near Stocksfield for the duration of the shoot.

Forever Home is supported by the North East Production Fund, administered by North East Screen and designed to encourage more productions to shoot in the region and support its TV and film industry.

OPERA: Cosi fan tutte
Where: The Glasshouse, Gateshead
When: September 19, 7pm
Bookings and info: theglasshouseicm.org

Launching the new classical season in style is this notable production – in the newly refurbished Sage One – of Mozart’s opera of 1790 whose comic theme, it must be said, some might nowadays not find so funny.

The story hinges on a bet, two young officers insisting on the fidelity of their fiancées and an acquaintance urging them to put it to the test – resulting in a wager and a plot.

The libretto was by Lorenzo Da Ponte and this is the third of the so-called Mozart-Da Ponte operas (the others being Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro).

There was a production of it here by the Samling Institute for Young Artists back in 2005, directed by Sir Thomas Allen and with the (then) Northern Sinfonia. Don Giovanni followed in 2007.

The (now) Royal Northern Sinfonia and its Chorus will be involved again in this first flowering of a new multi-year Mozart-Da Ponte project led by music director Dinis Sousa.

The international cast includes Christina Gansch (Fiordiligi), Alexandra Oomens (Dorabella), Jonas Hacker (Ferrando), Cody Quattlebaum (Guglielmo), Rebecca Evans (Despina) and Neil Davies Don Alfonso.

THEATRE: The Wasp
Where: People’s Theatre, Newcastle
When: Until September 12
Bookings and info: peoplestheatre.co.uk

It’s buzzing at the People’s which launches its new season with this edgy two-hander from 2015.

Heather and Carla were classmates once but hardly pals. Heather was bullied and Carla was a principal tormentor.

Now, 20 years on, they’re reunited, life having treated them very differently, and Heather has a proposition.

Hattie Eason plays Heather and Annie Cairns is Carla in Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s psychological drama with twists, a dash of bile and the capacity to test audience sympathies.

The season progresses with Tom Wright’s adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsey’s novel which also became an acclaimed film in 1975 (October 12-17).

Then come 2:22 – A Ghost Story by ex-People’s member Danny Robins (October 20-24); But Why Bump Off Barnaby? by Rick Abbott (Young People’s Theatre, November 5-7); Michael Frayn’s evergreen Noises Off (November 17-21); and The Lion in Winter by James Goldman, which also became a famous film (November 23-28).

The 2026 panto is Beauty and the Beast (December 12-20) and the traditional New Year ‘Agatha’ Murder on the Nile (January 12-16).

Following that (February 9-13) comes The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with a leading role many People’s actresses would surely kill for.

COMEDY: Hear Me Roar
Where: Little Theatre, Gateshead
When: September 19
Bookings and info: ticketsource.com

After building a combined social media following of around 200,000, Gateshead’s Yvonne Vincent and Marie Thom are swapping their news feeds for the live stage.

The women behind Growing Old Disgracefully and Midlife Dramas in Pyjamas met online in 2023, became friends and launched their Hear Me Roar podcast.

Now they’ve turned their shared take on midlife into a live show and booked a night at Gateshead’s Little Theatre. Expect comedy sketches, songs and audience games taking aim at everything from menopause to the manosphere.

THEATRE: Wilko: Love and Death and Rock ’n’ Roll
Where: Gala Durham
When: September 15 (7.30pm) and 16 (2.30pm, 7.30pm)
Bookings and info: galadurham.co.uk

Many young people must have graduated in English from Newcastle University over the years, and a fair percentage must have studied Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic sagas.

No doubt most went on to enjoy rewarding careers – though none, I bet, to match that of John Wilkinson, from Essex.

In 1971, as Wilko Johnson, he co-founded brilliant rock band Dr. Feelgood.

On stage, recalled playwright Jonathan Maitland, Wilko “jittered and jerked like a demented robot, using his guitar as a machine gun to mow down the audience.

“It was funny, scary and thrilling.”

Wilko was a charismatic one-off. In 2012, when diagnosed with cancer and given a year to live, he refused chemo, saying he didn’t want to live his last months feeling “like s***”.

But Wilko’s cancer had been misdiagnosed and after surgery he lived… or at least for longer than predicted. He died in 2022, aged 75.

Maitland’s “play with live music” first brought Wilko to life at Southwark Playhouse last year before going to the West End.

Now it’s coming to the region where Maitland’s “favourite rock star of all time” once studied learned texts.

THEATRE: The Anastasia File
Where: Newcastle Theatre Royal
When: September 16-19
Bookings and info: theatreroyal.co.uk

One of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries takes centre stage on Tyneside next week in The Anastasia File.

Jenny Seagrove reprises her role in Royce Ryton’s drama, inspired by the story of a woman pulled from a Berlin canal in 1920 who later claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia – and therefore a survivor of the Romanov family’s execution.

Her fight for recognition and a share of the Romanov fortune continued for decades, leaving questions over memory, identity and truth in its wake. Directed by Roy Marsden, the touring production also stars Simon Shepherd, Ashley D. Gayle and Rosie Thomson.

STILL SHOWING

Music: King King, The Glasshouse, Gateshead, Sept 9
Theatre: Othello, Northern Stage, Newcastle, Sept 11-26
Exhibition: Kitchen Sink Realism, NGCA, Culture House Sunderland, Sept 12 to Jan 17
Music: Dave Stewart, The Fire Station, Sunderland, Sept 14 and 15
Lecture: The Anastasia File, Lit & Phil, Newcastle, Sept 14, 6pm
Event: Heritage Open Days, Venues and attractions all over the North East, Sept 11-20
Music: Hollywood Adventure, Gala Durham, Sept 10-11, 7pm
Comedy: Seann Walsh - This Is Torture, ARC, Stockton (Sept 12); The Witham, Barnard Castle (Sept 25); and Queen’s Hall Arts (Sept 26)
Theatre: The Departure, Alphabetti Theatre, Newcastle, Sept 11
Festival: WRITE Festival 2026, The Word, National Centre for the Written Word and other South Tyneside venues, until Sept 26
Audio: Music Lives Here podcast, Your ears, via wherever you get your podcasts
When: Weekly until Sept 25
Dance: The Car Man, Newcastle Theatre Royal, until Sept 12
Event: Ushaw Flower Festival, Ushaw Historic House, Chapels and Gardens, Sept 10-13
Exhibition: CHROMA: A Measure of Colour, Arts Centre Washington, until Sept 18
Screen: Poised, STV player, available now
Exhibition: Victory Over the Sun: Adventures with Light, The Light, Aykley Heads, Durham, until Jan 17, 2027
Art: Northern Summer Exhibition, Newcastle Arts Centre, Westgate Road, until Sept 12
Exhibition: Things That Go!, Discovery Museum, Newcastle, until Feb 29, 2027
Exhibition: MOXIE: Generation Alpha Curates the Middlesbrough Collection, MIMA, Middlesbrough, until Mar 28, 2027. READ MORE
Exhibition: Discovering Dark Skies, Queen’s Hall Arts Centre, Hexham, until Sept 19
Screen: Ashington AFC: Saving Our Club, available to stream on BBC iPlayer
Event: Kynren – An Epic Tale of England, Bishop Auckland, County Durham, until Sept 12
Exhibition: Norman Cornish – A Life in Sketchbooks, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, until Jan 3. Read our full report
Exhibition: Mourning Tea Tyne & Lost Frequencies, Globe Gallery, North Shields, ongoing
Exhibition: Joan Eardley, Granary Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed, until Oct 11
Screen: The Fortune, Channel 5, available now
Screen: Smoggie Queens, BBC Three and BBC iPlayer, available now
Screen: This Is Not A Murder Mystery, UTV and streaming on Channel Four, available now.
Radio: Si King on Desert Island Discs, BBC Sounds/iPlayer
Exhibition: Following the Eagle, Segedunum Roman Fort, Wallsend, until Oct 3
Exhibition: Picture This: Someone Like Me, Great North Museum: Hancock, until Jan 2027
Exhibition: Enigmas, RePUBlic Gallery, Blyth, ongoing
Radio: Tom and Lauren Are Going OOT!, BBC Sounds
Exhibition: Out of the Darkness, Mining Art Gallery, Bishop Auckland, until December

NOW BOOKING

Festival: Hexham Abbey Festival, Hexham, Sept 23-27
Comedy: Susan Calman - Tall Tales, Playhouse Whitley Bay (Sept 20); Sunderland Empire (Oct 2); Tyne Theatre and Opera House, Newcastle (Nov 6)
Music: Grace Petrie, The Fire Station, Sunderland, Oct 8
Music: African Soul Rebels featuring Les Amazones d’Afrique, Gasper Nali and N’famady Kouyate, Sage One, The Glasshouse, Oct 9
Music: The Hoosiers, Newgate Social, Newcastle, Oct 9
Folk Festival: Beyond the Moor, Gosforth Civic Theatre, Newcastle, Oct 10
Music: Mercury Prize Fringe, venues across Newcastle and Gateshead, Oct 15-22
Theatre: Our Friends in the North, Newcastle Theatre Royal, Oct 15-24
Event: An Intimate Evening with Trevor Horn - Adventures in Modern Recording, Gala Theatre Durham, Oct 31
Music: Friday Night Club with The Unthanks, Sage Two, The Glasshouse, Nov 6
Theatre: A Mini Series of Groundbreaking American Play Readings, Live Theatre, Newcastle, Nov 11-14
Music: Squeeze plus guest Billy Bragg, Newcastle o2 City Hall (Nov 16) and Stockton Globe (Nov 17)
Festival: Books on Tyne, Lit and Phil, Newcastle, Nov 19-28
Comedy: The Comic Strip Presents… Film Screening and Live Q&A, The Witham, Barnard Castle, Nov 25
Music: An Evening with Lambchop, Sage Two, The Glasshouse, Nov 26
Music: The Damned - Final Damnation 50, Newcastle o2 City Hall, Dec 1

2027

Theatre: Annie, Sunderland Empire, Jan 18-23
Music: Robben Ford, Sage Two, The Glasshouse, Jan 28
Music: James Blunt, Utilita Arena Newcastle Mar 28
Theatre: Jesus Christ Superstar, Newcastle Theatre Royal, Mar 16-27; and Sunderland Empire, Sept 14-18
Comedy: Matt Forde, Alnwick Playhouse (Apr 28); and The Witham, Barnard Castle (Apr 29)
Music: The Lindisfarne Story Episode VII: The Road to Kingdom Come, various North East venues from Apr 9 to May 1
Music: Simple Minds + Gary Numan, Utilita Arena Newcastle, May 13

🎄 FESTIVE FORECAST 🎄

Music: The Funk Collective - The Funk Before Christmas, ARC Stockton, Dec 5
Panto: Aladdin, Middlesbrough Town Hall, Dec 5-31
Family Theatre: The Elves and the Shoemaker, Gala Theatre Durham, Dec 8-24
Music: Smoove and Turrell Christmas Party, Gosforth Civic Theatre, Dec 11
Music: Kate Rusby at Christmas, Sage One, The Glasshouse, Dec 14
Panto: Cinderella, The WItham, Barnard Castle, Dec 18-19
Screen/Classical: Disney’s The Muppet’s Christmas Carol in Concert, Sage One, The Glasshouse, Dec 22
Music: The Young ‘Uns at Christmas, The Fire Station, Sunderland, Dec 23
Music: Christmas Rocks, Newcastle o2 City Hall, Dec 27-30

COMPETITION TIME

Welcome to our latest newsletter prize draw - offering our subscribers an exclusive chance to win tickets to see or do something great.

This week, we’ve got two pairs of tickets to see the premiere run of All At Sea at Live Theatre, Newcastle on September 26.

North East playwright Alison Carr takes the extraordinary ‘Canoe Man’ case as the jumping-off point for All At Sea – but don’t expect a straightforward retelling.

Written during lockdown, Carr’s fictional version follows Colin and Deborah, a married couple in a northern coastal town whose spiralling debts prompt an audacious solution: fake Colin’s death at sea and claim the insurance. From there, as Carr puts it, “This is a wild story. Let’s tell a wild story.”

Directed by Maria Crocker and performed by Phil Corbitt and Sarah Belcher, the two-hander explores marriage, money and the increasingly complicated consequences of one very big lie.

All At Sea runs at Live Theatre from September 24 to October 10. Visit the website for booking.

HOW TO ENTER:

To be in with a chance of winning, simply email MePlease@culturednortheast.co.uk using the subject line: ‘YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP’ by 5pm on Sunday, September 13.

The winner, who will be selected at random, will be notified within 48 hours of the entry deadline.

Terms and conditions: Only subscribers to the Cultured. North East newsletter are eligible to enter the Newsletter Prize Draw competition. Prizes are as stated - subject to availability - and non-transferable. No cash alternatives will be offered. You must be over 18 years of age to enter. The Editor’s decision is final.

Fans of Graham Norton’s best-selling novels set in his native Ireland will notice a big change when they sit down to watch channel Five’s starry screen adaptation of his family mystery Forever Home.

Gone are the jagged peninsulas and pastoral landscapes of County Cork and in their place, the windswept beaches and market towns of Northumberland.

The show’s executive producer, Kirstie Macdonald from FilmNation Entertainment, was relieved when the celebrity author agreed to the switch.

“I thought it would work brilliantly up here. But obviously Graham is known for his books set in Ireland. So of course I was nervous. But he just wanted to make sure the spirit of the book, what happens to this small rural community, was preserved.”

One of the main drivers for bringing the production to Northumberland was cost. Five lack the generous peaktime drama tariffs of bigger channels so they’ve become famously creative around co-productions and rights.

And with access to the North East Production Fund - administered by North East Screen - and local crew, Macdonald and her production partners from Madrid-based Mediapro, were able to aim for high end drama at a more affordable price tag.

It’s the latest North East drama commissioned by Paul Testar, Five’s newly promoted drama boss. Others have included The Fortune and The Feud from Lonesome Pine Productions.

He makes no secret that most of the channel’s 100 hours of drama are filmed overseas to take advantage of other country’s tax incentives. “If the government agreed to lower the threshold for high end TV drama tax credits from £1m an hour, imagine the jobs we could provide in the UK.

“We’re all about making the money go as far as possible and the North East Production Fund is part of that. Forever Home ticks a lot of boxes for us. It feels like a whole bigger project. And it’s attracted an amazing cast.”

That cast includes locals Denise Welch, Kevin Whately and Lewis Cope alongside Douglas Henshall, Samantha Bond and Amy Nuttall. Macdonald says: “With established names it’s not always about the money. These are fantastic scripts (by Clara Salaman) and the tone is quite unusual. Very funny but also dark.”

The plot centres around Carol (Amy Nuttall) who falls in love with an older man (Douglas Henshall) but finds their happiness cut short when he develops dementia and she discovers a body in the basement.

Producer Will Nicholson, fresh from ITV’s long-running detective drama Vera, is proud that 80 per cent of the talent on and off screen is local.

“I’m obviously very familiar with all the potential Northumberland locations, I’m aware of the talent and I know where to go for crew,” he says. “Up here you can split locations in a day – town, coast and country within 30 minutes. Which means the schedule can be very efficient. We’re also doing post-production locally with the brilliant David Fisher.”

Broomley Grange, a former hotel and outward bound centre near Stocksfield became the show’s main location and unit base. The 64-bedroom Victorian manor (built by the owners of Swan Hunters shipyard) underwent a major conversion at the hands of the film makers to create interiors that matched the exterior of a house in nearby Hexham, which serves as the façade of the family home.

“We had used the Grange on Vera and it felt right for the DNA of Forever Home,” says Nicholson. “It’s also big enough for dressing rooms, production offices and all the vehicles that accompany a big location shoot.”

Denise Welch fought hard to land the role of Moira and managed to persuade producers of the BBC’s Waterloo Road (where she plays supply teacher Steph) to release her in time to join the shoot in Northumberland. But she very nearly didn’t make it.

“I’d had a problem with my eye and as I was driving up to Northumberland I thought I’d better get it checked out,” explains the former Loose Women panel veteran who recently appeared in the hit Channel 4 drama Tip Toe.

“I popped into Vision Express and two hours later found myself with a retinal surgeon who said you’re not going anywhere. If I don’t operate on you by six o clock you’ll be blind! Turns out I had a fully detached retina which had folded over.

“I rang my agent in floods of tears because I thought I was going to lose the job. But the producers were amazing. They supported me and completely changed the shooting schedule.

“Two weeks later I was well enough and physically healed to return but basically couldn’t see anything out of my right eye for another six weeks. I was having to be guided everywhere on set.”

Welch, who also stars in the Channel 4 sitcom Stepping Up, said the role of matriarch Moira in Norton’s dark comedy-mystery ‘ticked all her boxes’: “The character is my age, a bit passive-aggressive, a bit narcissistic and there’s a dead body involved!

“I loved being part of this so much. Being surrounded by Geordie voices all day long and filming just two minutes from my sister’s house. This was my hood. I’d love to do more in the North East. I reminded the producers that I must be the only North East actress never to have appeared in Vera! I hear rumours they might be reviving the Catherine Cookson dramas. All I would say is, I’d look good in a bonnet and crinoline.”

Denise wasn’t the only cast member to overcome challenges on the shoot. North East actor Lewis Cope arrived on set in January direct from his barn-storming stint on Strictly Come Dancing. He had to juggle his role as Henshall’s son Caden with appearances on the Strictly arena tour.

“It was pretty exhausting looking back,” he said. “I’d finish on set and then a car would arrive to take me to the live show and then bring me back in the early hours. I basically danced every day for more than three months. It was crazy but it did wonders for my body.

“The directors Paul (Gay) and Claire (Winyard) were brilliant and there was real space for all us to contribute ideas. Graham Norton came to visit us on set and he seemed very happy with the differences between his novel and the tv adaptation.”

Amy Nuttall who plays the central role of Carol in the drama, is in awe of Cope.

“Lewis was a complete power house. He might have been in Southampton the evening before and on the road through the night, but in the makeup chair the following morning he always had a smile on his face, always knew his lines, just a joy to be around.”

It’s Nuttall’s third drama for channel Five having also starred in All Creatures Great and Small and The Feud.

“I’ve loved working for the channel. And it’s no surprise they’re choosing to film outside London in places like the North East. Let’s face it, it’s cheaper and more beautiful and the people are great.”

Forever Home starts its run on Five ion September 14.

The Mercury Prize came to Newcastle last year, Sam Fender taking the glory at the Utilita Arena… but there was something else, too.

As Adam MacDonald, project manager at North East music development agency Generator, recalled: “Last year, we headed into the unknown with the creation of the first-ever Mercury Fringe and the response from music lovers and the wider music industry across the North East completely blew us away.

“What made it so special was the collective enthusiasm of artists, venues, partners and audiences across the city. It showed exactly why Newcastle is such a brilliant home for the Mercury Prize.”

It made sense to use such a high profile national event to showcase the wealth of talent in the city and region… so, since the Mercury Prize is coming back, it’s happening again.

“This year we’ve taken that energy and built on it,” said Adam.

“The programme is bigger and more ambitious, with even more opportunities to discover new music, see brilliant artists and get involved in Mercury Prize week.

“We can’t wait to see the city come alive again.”

Mercury Prize Fringe 2026 will start on October 15 and run up to the day of the big Arena reveal on the 22^nd.

It will feature more than 30 events at a range of venues, all aimed at highlighting Newcastle as a music-orientated city.

Highlights will include…

A screening of Sam Fender: Live at London Stadium at the Tyneside Cinema on October 17, but don’t get too excited about that. Not surprisingly, it’s already sold out.

But that same day Newcastle music legend Tommy Caulker, founder of World Headquarters, will be the subject of A Life in Records at Public House HiFi (hosted by Gingerino’s Kitchen on Stepney Bank).

Listen to the man who has had his ear to the ground in Newcastle for decades and then hear one of the UK’s leading sound systems.

Grainger Market Unplugged returns (October 17 again), showcasing throughout the day acoustic sets from some of the most exciting emerging North East artists.

Mini Mercury x First Gigs at The Grove, in Byker (October 18) will give budding musicians aged 12 to 18 the chance to take over a professional music venue, work with venue staff and sound engineers and then perform in front of an audience.

There will be a special live edition of BBC Introducing at The Glasshouse, Gateshead (October 19), spotlighting some of the North East’s emerging talent and headlined by Sunderland’s Tom A. Smith (also, sadly, sold out).

Then there’s An Evening With Knats at the John Marley Centre, in Newcastle’s West End (October 20) when the Mercury Prize-shortlisted band will perform and explain some of the stories behind their shortlisted album and how growing up in the area helped to shape their sound.

A vital element of the Mercury Fringe will be Generator Live, a free-to-attend conference at Newcastle’s Crowne Plaza on October 21 which will bring together emerging artists and creatives with leading music industry figures.

Topics will include building audiences, collaborative songwriting and developing a sustainable career in music.

It will also feature a special BBC Introducing session hosted by Shakk Hashemi and Kelly Betts.

The Mercury Fringe is presented and funded by Newcastle City Council and the BPI who organise the Mercury Prize.

The programming is led by Generator which has worked with artists, venues and partners across the city to build on the success of last year.

Dr Jo Twist, CEO of the BPI, said: “We’re so delighted to be bringing the Mercury Fringe back to Newcastle in October, with a bigger and bolder programme than ever, thanks to our partners at Generator and Newcastle City Council.

“Newcastle is a true music city and we’re grateful to its incredible music ecosystem for welcoming the Mercury Prize.

“We know this year’s Fringe will offer the local community an important opportunity to connect, inspire and create a lasting legacy together.”

Councillor Rob Austen, of Newcastle City Council, added: “We cannot wait for the Mercury Prize to return to Newcastle and for the Fringe festival to return to Tyneside.

“It has always been vitally important to us that the ceremony is more than just one night; that it creates opportunities for artists, venues and partners, and leaves a lasting legacy across the region.

“Last year was amazing but we want 2026 to be even bigger and better.

“We are proud to champion Newcastle as the cultural heartbeat of the North and to show local artists that they don’t need to leave the region to forge a career in the music industry.”

Find tickets and details online here.

Hello and welcome to this week’s Cultured. On Sunday, coming to you direct from a Lindisfarne Festival field. Gusty but glorious.

David Whetstone is back from his holidays and has wasted no time getting out and about, starting with a preview screening of Forever Home, a new TV drama filmed in the North East.

He’s also been looking ahead to Live Theatre’s autumn season and has news of one of the first exhibitions heading to Sunderland’s soon-to-open Culture House, featuring the work of Sunderland-born artist Audrey Amiss.

Elsewhere, Tony Henderson turns his attention to the documentary photography of Chris Killip and a new book bringing together images from his remarkable archive.

And then there’s football.

Sam Patterson introduces us to Nutmeg Salad, the new newsletter and online platform she’s launched with her other half, The Futureheads’ Ross Millard. The pair admit to an “unhealthy obsession” with the beautiful game, but are out to celebrate how much more to football there is than football.

Finally, Collected Books are back with another recommendation for your bookshelf – this time their Book of the Month for September.

Hope you enjoy it all, and have a great Sunday.

Ross Millard and Sam Patterson both have an ‘unhealthy obsession’ with football culture, which they’ve started channeling into a new newsletter and online platform. Over to Sam...

After I (Sam) left my creative job working with some of the biggest names in football, including Nike and adidas, to move into corporate life, I missed that connection with the game.

I’m a trustee at the National Football Museum and, after being asked to contribute to conversations about football culture and women’s sport on radio and TV, the idea for Nutmeg Salad was formed.

Ross, a lifelong Man Utd season ticket holder, is a musician, songwriter, photographer and festival director.

He has spent the last 20+ years as a recording artist, playing gigs around the world with Sunderland band The Futureheads, and watching as much football as he can along the way, and seemed like the perfect person to partner with.

Especially since we live in the same house…

Nutmeg Salad isn’t about match reports, transfer rumours or breaking news. There are plenty of others who do that much better than we could. Instead, we’re interested in the culture, mythology, design and traditions that make football magic. Read more

Founded by Emma Hamlett, Collected Books is an independent bookshop in Durham, with two floors of books to browse as well as coffee, wine, and cake to enjoy. They specialise in writing by women but stock all genres of fiction and non-fiction as well as books for kids, YA titles, poetry, and classics.

With the Booker Prize shortlist announcement fast approaching, we’ve been chatting in the shop (between booksellers, with customers) about this year’s longlist, and which books on it we have most enjoyed.

Having read our way through all of the female-authored titles between us, from blazing climate fiction to expansive explorations of friendship in which the whole of the human condition is laid bare, we’re going the bookish equivalent of backing a horse with our recommendation for you this weekend – and Collected’s September Book of the Month – in The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis.

The Shadow of the Object is an atmospheric and unpredictable story as well as an incredible, sensitive, and unexpected read. After an unusual connection is formed between an elderly German woman and protagonist Flora, we follow the unfolding and shifting repercussions of this bond borne out of a chance encounter.

A thoughtful and evocative novel about grief, deception, disguise, ownership and what can and cannot be recreated. Moving between Mexico and London, Aridjis masterfully crafts shifting panels and rotating illusions, playing with shadows, playing with time, place and expectation, creating a wonderful ode to the endless possibility of the present.

Flora is visiting home in Mexico when the family dog leaps up and bites her hand. She winds up in hospital where she undergoes several surgeries under anaesthesia and meets Wilhelmina, an elderly German woman with pneumonia, who collects pre-cinema toys and instruments.

The two of them embark on a series of dream-like conversations in the hospital corridors. Wilhelmina puts on a magic lantern show for Flora, leaving her spellbound. But when things take an unexpected turn, Flora finds herself entrusted with an important mission. She returns to London, where she resumes her job polishing silver at a jewellery shop, but also strikes up a strange friendship with Wilhelmina’s son, Max. As Flora dips in and out of her imagination, she is increasingly aware it’s not only the magic lantern that projects, and her perception of reality is subtly altered.

Find out more about the 2026 Booker Prize Longlist as well as many more of Collected’s current top reads and recommendations on Collected’s website.

After I (Sam) left my creative job working with some of the biggest names in football, including Nike and adidas, to move into corporate life, I missed that connection with the game.

I’m a trustee at the National Football Museum and, after being asked to contribute to conversations about football culture and women’s sport on radio and TV, the idea for Nutmeg Salad was formed.

Ross, a lifelong Man Utd season ticket holder, is a musician, songwriter, photographer and festival director.

He has spent the last 20+ years as a recording artist, playing gigs around the world with Sunderland band The Futureheads, and watching as much football as he can along the way, and seemed like the perfect person to partner with.

Especially since we live in the same house…

Nutmeg Salad isn’t about match reports, transfer rumours or breaking news. There are plenty of others who do that much better than we could. Instead, we’re interested in the culture, mythology, design and traditions that make football magic.

We write about what we think is interesting, entertaining or just plain weird about football culture: music, art, fashion, food, rituals and rivalries.

From European ground hopping to Sunday-league. From high-art through to fashion and music - anywhere that football intersects with popular culture.

We don’t take ourselves too seriously and, for a sport that’s responsible for so much heartbreak, want to look at the joyful, funny and totally bonkers parts of the game. That’s why our tagline is ‘there’s more to football than football.’

Every weekend we publish an article written by one of us about our experiences, opinions and observations about football culture. We also share ‘Good Stuff’ - a round up of the best of football culture that week, from books to kits and merch to art.

It doesn’t matter if readers are lifelong season ticket holders or have never been to a match.

Nutmeg Salad is for people who are curious about the creativity and culture surrounding football and are just as interested in what’s going on off the pitch as on it.

Our content is for anyone who has ever felt something when it comes to football. Even if that feeling is often gut-wrenching disappointment…

We’d love Nutmeg Salad to grow and build a real community of likeminded football fanatics who can share their love of everything from their best vintage eBay football merch purchase to why women’s football fandom doesn’t need to copy the blueprint of the men’s game.

We’re planning on adding other voices into the mix too with interviews and guest articles from interesting people in and around the sport.

We’d love to eventually do some meet ups and events - maybe even a Nutmeg Salad five-a-side football tournament.

You can sign up to Nutmeg Salad here.

The relative conviviality of a preview screening shouldn’t perhaps be taken as a surefire guide to the nature and content of a forthcoming TV drama series.

If you’ve read Forever Home, the fourth novel by Graham Norton – chat show host with a talent for plots and prose to match his gift of the gab – then you’ll know it’s not all sweetness and light.

But conviviality there was in abundance at the Tyneside Cinema on Friday night as cast, crew and other interested parties got a first glimpse of what we’ll be seeing on our screens from September 14, when the first of six episodes airs on Channel 5.

This ‘invitation only’ preview arranged by North East Screen, energetic promoter of the region’s many filmic attributes, was another brilliant showcase for its native talent and still largely unexploited potential.

Some of this talent found time for a chat before we all took our seats, packing out the Tyneside’s splendid Classic auditorium.

Denise Welch is cast as Moira Crottie whose daughter Carol (Amy Nuttall) is the longtime partner of Robert Barrie whose wife, so we’re told, ran away years ago with another man.

Denise is an actress deeply rooted in the region – roles in Byker Grove, Spender and Auf Wiedersehean, Pet feature on her long CV – and she could hardly champion it more effectively if she were to walk around sporting a hat shaped like the Penshaw Monument or the Tyne Bridge.

“I heard a while ago from people in the business that the North East is one of the places really growing in the film industry,” she declared.

“That’s really music to my ears because I think we would all – even Amy who’s an unofficial Geordie – would love to work here all the time if we could.

“Wouldn’t we, James?”

This to Sunderland-born James Baxter who readily concurs – “of course” – and whose boyfriend role in episode one of Forever Home is a bit of an eye-opener, to say the least (“No spoilers”, pleaded the series publicists).

I first saw James nearly 20 years ago in a challenging play called Scarborough, by Fiona Evans, in which he played a schoolboy being romanced – abused? - by a teacher.

It was daring stuff and James shone, being nominated for an award for his performance on the Edinburgh Fringe and shortly afterwards heading to Emmerdale.

“I think,” went on Denise, warming to her theme, “that anybody I’ve spoken to in this business, if they’ve worked up here, will say the North East is one of their favourite places to work – not only because of the locations but because of the people.

“I think Geordies are known for being just so welcoming and we’ve got some incredibly talented people here on both sides of the camera.”

What would an ‘unofficial Geordie’ say about it?

Amy Nuttall, who affects a good North East accent and is put through the emotional wringer as Carol Crottie, said of the shoot: “It was just such a lovely, easy time, actually.

“It didn’t feel like work most of the time and people up here are just really friendly.

“I know I’m from the North West, although I’ve worked more in the North East, but northerners are renowned for being friendly.”

Hastily she added: “Not that southerners aren’t… but it just makes your day-to-day easier and we were looked after so well and had such an amazing North East crew. It made it all easy, to be honest.”

These can’t just be platitudes.

Amy was here not so long ago filming The Feud, another six-parter for Channel 5 in which North East Screen also played a large part, and, as a 14-year-old, performed in a National Youth Music Theatre production, Aurelius – the Valiant Apprentice, at the Tyne Theatre & Opera House.

“You know, Kevin Whately’s brother Frank co-wrote the musical and directed me in it,” said Amy, a talented singer as well as an actress.

Kevin Whately also has a part in Forever Home. “Such a small world,” remarked James Baxter.

Lewis Cope, who plays Robert Barrie’s son Kaden, dances as well as Amy sings – not that either gets to demonstrate these talents in the Channel 5 drama.

Born in Hartlepool, he joined the cast of Billy Elliot the Musical at the age of 11, playing Billy’s friend, Michael. “I saw him in it,” said Denise.

Last year he was wowing TV viewers with his performances in Strictly Come Dancing and recalled a hectic few weeks when the Forever Home shooting schedule coincided with his commitment to the ‘Strictly’ live shows.

It had entailed a lot of travelling and late nights.

But he, too, had enjoyed being on location in Northumberland (look out for local landmarks, with Hexham getting a starring role in episode one).

“I live in London and every time I was coming here to film it didn’t seem like I was getting on the train to go to work,” said Lewis.

“It felt like I was going home. It always felt fun. I absolutely love being in the North East and would love for more things to be made here.

“Maybe then I’d move back.”

Cast Lewis in anything and it seems you’ll get a ready-made audience. He’s one of 14 children (nine boys and five girls) and all live in Hartlepool.

His parents were in Friday’s audience and a nephew, Alfie, was on screen, playing the young Kaden Barrie in flashback.

Lewis recalled being asked if he could supply photos of himself as a child because they were looking to cast the role. Lewis mentioned young Alfie, who has some acting experience, and he got the part. “He did audition,” laughed Lewis.

All praised the job done by screenwriter Clara Salaman in adapting the novel, tweaking it in places (Declan in the novel becomes Robert on TV, played by Douglas Henshall) without losing its narrative drive.

“It does keep you on the edge of your seat and it keeps you guessing,” said James.

“I’m hoping that because of those qualities people will enjoy it.”

One of the biggest page-to-screen ‘tweaks’ was relocating the story from Ireland to Northumberland, a decision motivated by cost and practicality.

Graham Norton, I was assured, had been happy with that and loved the TV treatment.

After the Tyneside showing of episode one, the cast lined up on stage for a Q&A chaired by Lisa Laws of North East Screen.

Denise Welch revealed that she had undergone eye surgery during the shoot, having suffered a detached retina, and recalled, to the embarrassment of producer Will Nicholson, his assertion that every North East actor had appeared in Vera, on which he had also worked.

She very definitely had not, she said indignantly, and she had been available.

And if he or anyone else wants to make amends, they could do worse than cast Denise in a period drama.

“I’ve always desperately wanted to wear a bonnet,” she declared.

And apart from “one spit and a cough in The Glass Virgin” she hadn’t appeared in any other of the many Catherine Cookson TV productions.

“It just infuriates me.”

Both on and off set, fellow cast members agreed, Denise had been a source of much of the fun and laughter during this latest North East TV adventure.

Her character, certainly, provides much of the justification for Forever Home, which in many respects looks rather bleak, being described as a dark comedy.

But judge for yourselves when the series is aired on Channel 5 (the first three episodes running Monday to Wednesday from September 14 and the last three on the same days from September 21).

Forever Home is co-produced by FilmNation Entertainment (under executive producer Kirstie Macdonald, who is from the North East and was on stage on Friday) and The Mediapro Studio.

Most importantly, it received support from the North East Production Fund which is administered by North East Screen – another example of what a bit of strategic funding can do.

Fontaines D.C. confirm St James’ Park date for 2027

After weeks of rumours, Fontaines D.C. have confirmed they will play a major summer show at St James’ Park next year.

The Irish rock band will make their first North East stadium appearance at Newcastle United’s home on Thursday, July 1, 2027, as part of a five-date run of outdoor headline shows.

The BRIT Award winners, who were shortlisted for the Mercury Prize when the ceremony came to Newcastle last year, will also play Cardiff, London, Manchester and Glasgow.

The announcement follows a sold-out UK arena tour for the band, whose rise has seen them headline increasingly large venues across Europe and North America.

Newcastle United chief operating officer Brad Miller said: “Fontaines D.C.’s first stadium performance in the North East promises to be an unforgettable night, uniting the city’s passion for live music with the famed atmosphere of St. James’ Park.”

Tickets go on general sale at 10am on September 10 here.

North East cultural freelancer champion steps onto national stage

North East cultural leader Leila D’Aronville has been appointed to a new Government role aimed at putting the voices of the UK’s creative freelancers at the heart of policy-making.

Leila, who founded North East Cultural Freelancers to support the region’s independent creative and cultural workforce, has been named one of two new Freelance Champions alongside cultural policy specialist Lizzie Crump.

The pair will represent the interests of an estimated 703,000 self-employed people working across the UK’s creative industries, including through seats on the Creative Industries Council, the joint forum bringing together industry and Government.

Leila has spent years advocating for freelancers in the North East through North East Cultural Freelancers, which has more than 6,000 members and supports individual creative practitioners and small organisations across the region.

She said: “As someone who grew up in a freelancing family, and who continues to work freelance while championing the North East’s independent creative and cultural workforce, I know first-hand the pressures and possibilities that shape freelance lives. It’s why I’ve spent years advocating for better conditions, and why I’m honoured to take on this role.” Read more

Lindisfarne Festival to see the summer out in style

As per the pre-newsletter note, thousands of festival-goers and good-time seekers are gathering on the Northumberland coast as Lindisfarne Festival gets into full swing.

The three-day party overlooking Holy Island, which was named Best Small Festival at the UK Festival Awards last year, kicked off yesterday with The Proclaimers taking the headline slot. Razorlight will top the bill tonight, before Faithless bring this year’s festival to a close tomorrow.

Also appearing across the weekend are Soul II Soul, Heather Small and Utah Saints, alongside plenty of North East talent.

Local acts on the bill include Bear Park and Swindled, while a host of the region’s comedians and DJs are also making the trip to the coast.

Culture House prepares to welcome audiences HOME

A large-scale immersive production featuring dozens of local participants will help officially open Sunderland’s new Culture House later this month.

HOME, devised by Sunderland-based dance company Southpaw, will be performed six times across September 26 and 27, combining live performance, digital visuals, projection and storytelling throughout the new multi-purpose cultural venue.

The production follows Lyra, a Sunderland-born woman who fulfils her dream of becoming an astronaut after being encouraged by her late father to “look up”. Her journey through space takes in the city’s past, present and future, encountering some famous Sunderland figures along the way.

Community participants will perform alongside Southpaw’s professional dancers, appearing around the building, in its windows and within immersive digital scenes.

Southpaw artistic director Robby Graham said: “HOME will bring together movement, music, projection and digital technology to tell a story of who we are, where we’ve come from and what we might become.”

Tickets are available now, with numbers limited for each performance. Culture House Sunderland opens on September 12. Look out for our preview of what to expect in the coming days.

Forever Home cast gathers for Tyneside Cinema preview

Stars of Channel 5 drama Forever Home gathered at Tyneside Cinema this evening for a special preview screening ahead of its broadcast premiere later this month.

Denise Welch and Amy Nuttall were among the cast joining crew members for an early look at the adaptation of Graham Norton’s novel, which has relocated the story to the North East.

Produced by FilmNation and supported by the North East Production Fund and North East Screen, the drama was filmed entirely in the region and also stars Kevin Whately, Lewis Cope and Douglas Henshall.

Look out for our full report and more on the series in the coming days.

Keeping Barbara’s art close to home

The landscapes, communities and history of the North East inspired much of artist Barbara Kennard’s work. Her daughter Julia Bullas explains why she hopes her art will remain part of the region.

A year after losing my mum, artist and printmaker Barbara Kennard, one thing that brings me joy (apart from remembering her wicked laugh) is knowing her work is still being enjoyed.

Mum would have loved that.

She made work that connected people with places, stories and history, and nowhere captured her imagination quite like the North East.

Although she was originally from Basildon and my dad hailed from Kent, the North East became their home for more than 30 years. The friends they made, the experiences they had and places they explored in the region shaped their lives and in turn, shaped Mum’s art.

I was lucky enough to be part of her creative journey. I attended her Fine Art degree exhibition at the University of Sunderland, proudly helping put up her prints. On the surface, it appeared to be about geese. In reality, it was an exploration of female strength and resilience.

Over the years, her art evolved. Her focus increasingly turned towards North East culture and history, particularly the stories of working communities, the changing identity of the region and the landscapes that bear the memories of the people who have gone before us. Read more

North East comedy legends prepare for Hall of Fame honours

Some of the region’s best-known comedy names will be celebrated next week at the inaugural North East Comedy Hall of Fame.

Presented by North East comedy collective Felt Nowt, the event takes place at Newcastle’s Tyne Theatre and Opera House on September 10, with stand ups Sammy Dobson and Cal Halbert hosting.

The first group of inductees spans generations of North East comedy legends past and present and includes: Viz co-founders Simon and Chris Donald, Stan Laurel, Mark Sheridan, Lauren Pattison, Anvil Springsteen, Lost Voice Guy, Brendan Healy and the team behind Sunday for Sammy.

Organisers are promising an evening of special performances, surprise guests and live music as they celebrate both household names and alternative trailblazers who have contributed to the region’s comedy heritage.

Felt Nowt, which plans to make the Hall of Fame an annual event, describes the occasion as: “Like the Oscars but if it was a laugh and nobody got punched.”

Tickets available here.

Clock ticking for Sketch for Sammy hopefuls

And talking of Sunday for Sammy (above), budding North East comedy writers have just days left to enter this year’s Sketch for Sammy competition.

Entries close on September 12, with six finalists chosen to have their sketches professionally performed in front of a live audience at a Sketch for Sammy night.

An overall winner will receive the Clement and La Frenais Comedy Award, named after legendary writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, whose credits include Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Porridge and The Likely Lads.

There could be an even bigger audience ahead, with the possibility of a sketch making it into the next Sunday for Sammy arena show. More details here.

The North East has a well-documented history of radical discourse and it gives rise to an event Live Theatre is hosting in partnership with the New Statesman magazine.

It takes the form of a panel discussion focusing on the question The Radical North East: Is This Our Moment?

It is timed, of course, to whet the appetite for Live Theatre’s forthcoming co-production of Our Friends in the North with Newcastle-based Eastlake Productions and the Theatre Royal, where it is to be staged from October 15 to 24.

Peter Flannery’s play – turned into the famous BBC TV drama series which has been the inspiration for this new adaptation 30 years on – spanned decades, taking in regional and national politics, industrial unrest, police corruption and all manner of dodgy dealings.

It presented the region as a ferment of radical thinking, building on a colourful history that has given us plaques, statues, a wealth of challenging archival material (peruse the shelves of the Lit & Phil to get a flavour) and perhaps a certain nonconformist attitude.

Among those speaking at the event on Friday, September 11 (8pm) will be North East Mayor Kim McGuinness, Middlesbrough playwright Ishy Din and cultural commentator Alex Niven, author of The North Will Rise Again.

It will be chaired by Tom McTague, New Statesman editor in chief.

Is this our moment? You’ll have to be there to find out and tickets are on sale (tenner a time) from the Live Theatre box office.

Meanwhile this famous crucible of radical theatre has taken the wraps off an autumn season of wide-ranging appeal.

It opens with Newcastle playwright Alison Carr’s latest, All At Sea, a boat-rocking dark comedy inspired by the notorious ‘canoe man’ insurance scam of 2002.

It runs from September 24 until October 10 before transferring to Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre – and you can find out more from Sam Wonfor’s interview with Alison.

There’s more comedy to be had in Tits Up! by Alison Stanley and Leah Bell, a play which first saw light of day at Laurels in Whitley Bay.

But there’s a serious backdrop to this story about Tina, Rachel and Rosie, three very different women brought together by breast cancer.

The show by Entertainment Unlimited and Stanley Creatives is billed as “powerfully funny and deeply moving” and concerned with “life, choices and the bonds that get us through”.

It calls in at Live Theatre on October 13 on an autumn tour which begins at the Customs House, South Shields, on October 1.

There will be two performances (October 16 and 17) of No Apologies, written and performed by Emma Frankland, an award winning writer, theatre maker and performer who describes her work as often “playfully destructive and gloriously irreverent”.

Marlborough Productions, based on the south coast, of which Frankland is an associate artist, sends out this “spectacular collision between theatre and grunge”.

Live call it “a radical, queer mis-remembering of Nirvana’s iconic 1993 MTV Unplugged concert”, hailing it as both “urgent and politically sharp” and “witty and emotionally powerful”.

Lyn Gardner, in The Stage. Called it “ruddy gorgeous”. Was Kurt Cobain trans? Did he really wish he’d been born female? Who better than Frankland to ask the questions?

Popular female comedy troupe Your Aunt Fanny return and wrap up the month (October 29-31) with Crease, an hour of sketches with “real characters, absurd scenarios and impeccable wordplay”.

November brings play readings, including a pair of hits that seemed at one time to be permanently touring.

First there’s The Vagina Monologues by V, new moniker of American writer Eve Ensler, on November 5 and 6, and then comes Stones In His Pockets, the comedy by Belfast-born Marie Jones, on November 7.

A mini-series of readings from across ‘the Pond’ follows, representing a selection of what Live are calling “ground-breaking diverse American voices”.

Topdog/Underdog, a “darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity” by Suzan-Lori Parks, opens proceedings on November 11 and 12.

The play, which opened off-Broadway in 2001 and had a run at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2003, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Then, on November 14, there’s John, by another Pulitzer winner, Annie Baker, which premiered in 2015 and tells of a struggling Brooklyn couple navigating the painful dissolution of their relationship.

The play My Name Is Rachel Corrie recalls the 23-year-old American activist who was killed by an armoured bulldozer operated by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) when trying to prevent Palestinian homes being demolished.

Her death in 2003 caused an international outcry. The play, fashioned from Rachel’s diaries and emails by the late actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katherine Viner, who now edits The Guardian, has had a predictably chequered history.

It opened at the Royal Court Theatre in 2005 when it won awards. But a proposed transfer to New York resulted in the theatre there postponing it “indefinitely” for what it deemed political content.

Critic Michael Billington, in The Guardian, called it “a stunning account of one woman’s passionate response to a particular situation” and said theatre had a duty to be honest but no obligation to give a complete picture.

A Canadian reviewer called it “an excellent piece of polemic”.

It comes to Newcastle in a much praised production from Manchester’s Take Back Theatre, in association with The Dukes, Lancaster, and with Harriet Bibby playing Rachel.

Then, in a blink, Christmas will be upon us.

The Suggestibles’ devised-on-the-spot Impro Pantso returns on December 17 and 18, as does family show Where Do All The Kittiwakes Go At Christmas? (this time in Live’s main auditorium) from December 19 to 31.

Find details of all these shows and more on the Live Theatre website.

It was a time when the industrial and social landscape of the North East seemed to change in the blink of an eye as shipyards, mines and big factories vanished and terraced rows of communities were demolished.

There to capture it was photographer Chris Killip, recording the last years and later what remained, in terms of people and places, of what he himself called “another country”.

His images were often powerfully bleak. A picture of the demolition of swathes of Bensham Bank in Gateshead looks like a scene from the end of the Second World War.

They filled his 50-image book In Flagrante, published in 1988, which propelled him to national prominence.

Killip died in 2020, aged 74. Now a new book, Chris Killip: North, has been published by Thames & Hudson, in a fresh interpretation of the photographer’s work between 1975 and 1986, featuring many previously unpublished pictures.

From the demise of the shipyards to the miners’ strike, Chris Killip’s lens captures the upheaval, the divisions and communities.

The book is edited by Mark Holborn and produced with exclusive access to Killip’s archive.

Killip himself stated: “I wanted to record people’s lives because I valued them. I wanted them to be remembered.”

The book includes images such as a row of houses against the backdrop of a pit heap at Pegswood in Northumberland, sea coal gatherers at Lynemouth beach, Durham Miners Gala, the miners’ strike at Easington, the pension day queue outside Welbeck Road post office in Newcastle and an advertising hoarding on Scotswood Road on which has been painted Newcastle Rules OK.

The images reflect the divisions that still exist in Britain, claim the publishers.

Mark Holborn says: “We live in a world as fractured as that Killip witnessed forty or fifty years ago.”

Chris Killip arrived on Tyneside in 1975 to work on a two-year project. He stayed for 16 years.

“I liked the place. I liked the people and I liked the strong working class identity,” he said.

He arrived in the North East on a two-year Northern Arts/Northern Gas fellowship, and went on to be a founder member, exhibition curator and adviser of the Side Gallery in Newcastle, and its director from 1977-79.

He also took pictures, lots of them, including what would turn out to be the last years of shipbuilding on the Tyne and donated more than 30 of the images to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle, which staged his exhibition The Last Ships.

His companion book pictured a working class community that lived and worked in the shadow of the Wallsend and South Shields shipyards. “I didn’t think it at the time, but I suppose I was photographing history,” he said.

Killip pictured a way of life and an industry which would disappear sooner than anyone imagined.

“Even then I had a sense that all this was not going to last, although I had no idea how soon it would all be gone,” he said.

On the rapid loss of the region’s traditional industries, he said: “It was terrible for places like mining villages, where there was nothing else other than the pit.

“In the shipyards, people’s skills were lost - they couldn’t go to another shipyard. Those skills were no longer wanted.

“I was living through a very dramatic period of history and one of dramatic change for working-class communities.”

In 1991, he was invited to the United States to teach photography for a year at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Once again, he stayed, and became professor of visual and environmental studies.

In 1985, Killip’s work featured in an influential exhibition, Another Country: Photographs of the North East of England, at the Serpentine Gallery in London and in 2024 in an exhibition at London’s Tate, The 80s: Photographing Britain, which included the work of photographers such as Tish Murtha and Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen who graphically captured life in the North.