Culture Digest 17.07.26
This week's arts and culture news round up includes support for grassroots venues, a third outing for Smoggie Queens, a new honour for Redhills and a secure future for the AmberSide archive
Mayor launches 'landmark' £2.2m fund to support North East grassroots venues
A new £2.2m fund aimed at helping safeguard the future of North East grassroots venues has been launched by North East Mayor Kim McGuinness.
Announced at an event at Sunderland venue Independent tonight (July 16), the Small Venues Fund will provide grants of between £3,000 and £100,000 to venues across the region with capacities of up to 300 seats or around 500 standing.
The three-year programme will support investment in equipment, infrastructure and revenue-generating activity, with an initial £800,000 available in its first year when applications open this autumn.
The fund has been created to help ease the financial pressures facing smaller venues and protect the places where many North East artists take their first steps on stage.
Its launch comes at a critical moment for the UK’s grassroots music sector.
According to the Music Venue Trust’s Annual Report 2025, grassroots music venues contribute more than £500m to the UK economy each year but operate on average profit margins of just 2.5%.
More than half of all venues made no profit at all during 2025, while rising costs and changes to National Insurance and business rates contributed to the loss of 6,000 jobs across the sector.
Nature delivers for Northumberland
One of the North East’s greatest natural and heritage assets contributed £146 million in a year to the regional economy, according to the latest figures.
The new data shows strong growth in the value of tourism generated by Northumberland National Park and also highlights its importance for culture, heritage, nature and wellbeing.
Visitor numbers reached 1.79 million in 2025 - up 6.7% on the previous year and exceeding 2019 (pre-pandemic) levels for the first time - while generating £146 million.
Tourism in the national park is now estimated to support 1,369 full-time equivalent jobs. Read more
Peter Rabbit trail launches across Tyneside
Newcastle and North Tyneside are offering a new home for an army of flamboyant rabbits this summer as the latest St Oswald’s art trail gets underway.
Peter Rabbit: Tales on the Tyne organised by the hospice charity features 96 colourful sculptures inspired by Beatrix Potter’s much-loved character dotted across streets, parks and public spaces until September 14.
The 43 larger sculptures, designed by artists, will be auctioned in October to raise funds for the hospice, while 53 smaller versions created by schools and youth groups will return to their creators once the trail ends.
The latest trail follows the success of the Great North Snowdogs in 2016, Elmer's Great North Parade in 2019 and Shaun on the Tyne in 2023.
Trail maps, apps and sticker books are available, with proceeds supporting St Oswald’s Hospice.
Festival seeks North East Black filmmakers for inaugural Newcastle event
Black filmmakers, writers, directors and screen creatives from across the North East are being invited to submit their work for the first Newcastle edition of S.O.U.L. Fest.
Now in its seventh year, the festival, which will take place across nine days and three cities, celebrates Black British talent in film, championing diverse representations of Black Britain through a programme of features and short films.
The Newcastle event will take place at the Tyneside Cinema on September 5, with submissions open to North East-based Black creatives working across screen industries. The deadline for entries is July 27. Submissions can be made here.
Long live the Queens! North East comedy set for a third series
Following on from its successful second series and digital spin-off series The Dickie Show, the award-winning BBC sitcom Smoggie Queens, which is set and filmed in Middlesbrough, has been recommissioned for a third series on BBC iPlayer and BBC Three.
The series, which is produced by comedy production powerhouse, Hat Trick Productions and supported by the North East Production Fund, follows a gang of friends who are fiercely proud of their North Eastern town of Middlesbrough and their cherished pocket of the LGBTQ+ community.
It’s third instalment is promising to serve up more chaos, heart and mischief with Smoggie Queens staples Dickie (played by series writer Phil Dunning), Mam (Mark Benton), Lucinda (Alexandra Mardell), Sal (Patsy Lowe) and Stewart (Elijah Young) all signed on to return to the Boro.
‘Pitman’s Parliament’ gets promotion
There was an extra cause for celebration at the 140th Durham Miners’ Gala at the weekend with an accolade for one of the most important symbols of North East mining culture and history.
Redhills Miners’ Hall in Durham, home to the ‘Pitman’s Parliament’, has been upgraded to a Grade II* listed building by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the advice of Historic England.
It is thought to be the most outstanding example of trade union-inspired architecture in the country.
Grade II* listing goes to important buildings of more than special interest. Only 5.8 per cent of listed buildings are Grade II*.
Constructed between 1913 and 1915, the hall was purpose-built as a place where the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) could meet coal owners on their own terms. This meant the miners would not be intimidated by talks at the grand homes of the pit barons.
The building was listed at Grade II in 1988, but recent research has provided a better understanding of the quality and survival of the interiors as well as the building’s historic significance in a national context. Read more
'Major new public future' secured for AmberSide Collection
The treasure trove of North East documentary photographs and films known as the AmberSide Collection is to be given over to the custodianship of Newcastle University.
It is part of a project called Relocating Amber, for which charity The AmberSide Trust has received £242,508 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF).
The Trust says the move, described as a loan, will ensure protection for the “world renowned collection” while enabling greater public access to it.
Comprising more than 20,000 photographs, around 100 films and other material documenting working class communities, mining, shipyards and other aspects of life in the North East and beyond, it will be cared for as part of the university’s Special Collections, housed at the Philip Robinson Library.
Lauren Laverne reveals diagnosis of rare blood disorder
North East broadcaster and former Kenickie frontwoman Lauren Laverne has revealed she has been diagnosed with smouldering myeloma, a rare blood and bone marrow disorder.
The Sunderland-born presenter, 48, shared the news in an Instagram post on Friday, almost two years after announcing she had been diagnosed with cancer, from which she was later given the all-clear.
Reassuring fans and friends - who came out in numbers to post their support and love for the BBC Radio 6 fixture - said: “It's an asymptomatic blood and bone marrow disorder that in some people can develop into blood cancer. Thankfully for me the risk of this happening in my case is pretty low.
“At the moment I feel OK and don't need treatment. Most people my age who have it have no idea – it tends to be cancer survivors like me who are diagnosed early as we're so carefully monitored. It has nothing to do with my previous illness or my recent surgery, it's just one of those things.”
Lauren, who will be back at work as normal in a couple of weeks, also praised her GP for insisting her low iron levels were investigated, adding: “My message to others would be like him, not me!”
The 9075 go undercover for Matty Healy’s Malibu stag do
A tribute band found themselves keeping one of the music industry’s more unusual secrets this week after being flown to California to perform at the stag do of The 1975 frontman Matty Healy.
The 9075, who have built a following with their celebrations of the band’s catalogue, travelled to Malibu for a surprise appearance organised by Matty’s brother, actor Louis Healy, ahead of the singer’s wedding to model Gabbriette.
The surprise even extended to The 1975 themselves.
“It was all top secret, none of The 1975 band were aware so we were undercover,” 9075 manager Matthew Parker told North East charity Sunday for Sammy, of which Matty is a patron.
Unsurprisingly, Matty - who, along with Louis, counts North East actors Tim Healy and Denise Welch as his parents - eventually joined the band on stage for an impromptu performance. Lovely stuff.
Northumberland Cold War thriller finally published 40 years after it was written
A novel inspired by Cold War tensions, women’s peace camps and the landscapes of Northumberland is finally being published - four decades after it was first written.
Hobthrush, originally penned by Ryton writer and former Newcastle Polytechnic lecturer Tom Walker in the 1980s, imagines a chilling alternative history in which American nuclear missiles are stationed on Holy Island following protests similar to those seen at Greenham Common and RAF bases across Britain.
Tom was unable to find a publisher during his lifetime and the typewritten manuscript remained tucked away in a drawer for years after being completed.
It was only after Tom and his wife moved into a care home following his stroke that his daughter, Sue, rediscovered the novel while clearing the family home.
Tom died in 2013 and it wasn’t until a decade later that Sue sat down to read the manuscript properly and recognised its potential.
Two decades on the right path
A path which opens up the spectacular Northumberland coast to thousands of walkers is celebrating a major milestone.
The Northumberland Coastal Path was officially opened on July 17, 2006.
Stretching 62 miles (100km) from Cresswell in the south to Berwick in the north, the path has become one of the country’s favourite walking routes, with its beaches, rocky headlands, castles, two national nature reserves and coastal villages offering a constantly changing landscape.
It is estimated that the whole path is completed by around 3,500 walkers a year, although many thousands more visit one of the six stages, ranging from seven to 13 miles, into which the route is divided. Read more
National award nod for Wearside arts organisation
Sunderland-based social enterprise We Make Culture has been shortlisted for a National Arts and Cultural Education Award.
The organisation is among the finalists in the Mighty Roots Award category, having been selected from more than 250 submissions from across the UK.
The awards celebrate organisations making a difference through arts and cultural education, with winners due to be announced at a ceremony at the Royal Northern College of Music on October 21.
In a post on social media, We Make Culture said it was “incredibly honoured” to be recognised alongside so many organisations making an impact in communities across the country.
Buried 'genius' emerges at Vindolanda
Leading archaeologist Andrew Birley was floored by what he uncovered as he excavated a barrack room at a Northumberland Roman fort.
Andrew, director of excavations at Vindolanda, was investigating the fourth-century building when an unusually rounded flagstone caught his attention.
He turned the stone over and was met with the face of a carved Roman figure, unseen since it had been deliberately buried beneath the barrack floor more than 1,600 years ago.
The figure is believed to have formed part of a domestic shrine, where it would have represented a Genius – the protective spirit of a household or place, invoked by the Romans to bring security, prosperity and good fortune.
New book shines fresh light on Tish Murtha’s Newcastle
A major new collection of photographs by North East documentary photographer Tish Murtha has been published as interest in her work continues to grow more than a decade after her death.
Vandalism on a Grand Scale, produced in collaboration with the Tish Murtha Archive and published by the British Culture Archive, brings together Murtha’s images of early 1980s Newcastle - photographs which captured the realities of working-class life with an honesty and empathy that have since made them some of the defining images of the city.
The book’s publication comes as Murtha’s work is once again in the spotlight through Tish Murtha & Kuba Ryniewicz: Close to Home, the recently opened exhibition at BALTIC, which places her photographs alongside contemporary images of life in the North East.
Vandalism on a Grand Scale is available exclusively through the British Culture Archive.
Final chapter of landmark comics collection sale takes total past £165,000
The sale of what is believed to be the world’s largest private archive of British comics has concluded on Tyneside, with bidders spending more than £165,000 across two auctions.
The remarkable collection, assembled over a lifetime by Northumberland collector Peter Hansen, comprised an estimated 40,000 comics and 20,000 pieces of original artwork.
Highlights from the second Anderson & Garland sale included original Don Lawrence artwork for Karl the Viking fetching £1,300 and 59 original Look-in artboards featuring David Cassidy, which sold for £750.
Auctioneer John Anderson said: “The response from collectors, locally, nationally and internationally, has underlined just how important this material is to the history of British comics.”
Despite efforts to secure a permanent public home for the archive, Hansen’s hope of keeping the collection together ultimately proved impossible.
New nest bank gives good account of itself
An ambitious effort to establish an urban sand martin colony on Tyneside has taken flight after five chicks successfully fledged from a purpose-built nesting bank at the mouth of the Ouseburn.
The artificial bank, installed on Northumbrian Water land by conservation group Wild Intrigue with support from local fundraisers and the Northumberland & Tyneside Bird Club, was created after several pairs nested nearby in a sandstone wall in 2023.
“This partnership project is a great example of how organisations, communities and wildlife experts can work together to help nature thrive,” said Northumbrian Water conservationist Ian Cole.
The fledglings have now been ringed as part of research into the birds’ annual 4,000km migration between the North East and Africa.