Culture Digest 31.10.25
A round up of the arts and culture stories which caught our attention over the past week or so...
Sting brings it home with intimate performance at BALTIC fundraiser
While Björn Again were filling The Glasshouse next door with Abba hits, another kind of revival was taking place on Gateshead Quayside on Thursday night - as Sting returned home to help launch BALTIC’s ambitious £10 million Endowment Fund campaign.
The North East music legend delivered an intimate live performance at the Centre for Contemporary Art, headlining the gallery’s first Endowment fundraising gala and marking the start of a major new chapter for the landmark cultural venue.
The 17-time Grammy Award-winner, who made a personal donation to the fund earlier this year, took to the stage alongside longtime collaborator Dominic Miller for a performance which had undoubtedly contributed to a packed audience, which included well known faces Alan Shearer, Jimmy Nail and Jim Moir (Vic Reeves).
New writing award winner revealed
North East playwright Alison Carr has been named the winner of the inaugural Rose Fisher Award for Writing, unveiled at a packed celebration at Laurels Theatre in Whitley Bay on Monday night (October 27).
Her winning script, Opossum, is a dark comedy inspired by the notorious story of Anne and John Darwin - the Seaton Carew couple who were convicted of fraud in 2008 after faking John’s death in the North Sea and making false insurance claims.
The play was praised by judges for its wit, originality and strong regional voice.
The Rose Fisher Award was created earlier this year by Alison Stanley, head of theatre and programming at Laurels, in memory of her late mother, Rose Fisher - a passionate storyteller who never had the chance to publish her work.
Speaking after the event, Alison (Stanley) said: “It was amazing! A packed theatre celebrated the enormous talent we have in our region. This writing award is a platform for underrepresented voices to be heard and a way of keeping my mam’s memory alive.
“The very deserving winner was Alison Carr... I’m really looking forward to starting work on this project.”
Alison (Carr) added: “It’s an honour to win the inaugural Rose Fisher Award, set up in memory of Alison’s talented mam, a children’s author who never had the opportunity to have her work shared with wider audiences.
“What a tribute - to offer the opportunities she didn’t have, and to actively and significantly support arts in the region.”
The winning play receives £2,000 in development funding and the opportunity to see Opossum fully staged by Laurels in 2026.
Double-sized London screening for Doppelgänger
Alison Carr had quite the week.
As well as becoming the first winner of the Rose Fisher Award for Writing (see above), the Newcastle-based writer also saw her first foray into screenwriting, short film Doppelgänger, shown on the UK’s biggest screen at the BFI in London on Thursday night.
Part of the BBC’s Long Story Short series to be broadcast next Spring (as reported in last week’s Culture Digest), Doppelgänger was produced by Candle & Bell and shot in Newcastle and Gateshead with a North East crew and support from North East Screen.
You can read a full interview with Alison and Candle & Bell’s Maria Caruana Galizia next week.
Weller leads the charge to Exhibition Park festival
Paul Weller has been announced as the headline act of next summer’s In the Park Newcastle festival for which tickets go on general sale on Friday.
The festival made its Newcastle debut in 2024 in Leazes Park but is returning to Exhibition Park in 2026 where an enthusiastic crowd turned up in July to see Irish band Fontaines D.C. headlining.
For next year’s third Newcastle edition of the festival on Friday, July 10, the promoters are promising the “biggest and most memorable event yet”.
Of their first confirmed headliner, they say: “Over the course of a career that stretches back five decades, Paul Weller’s songs are woven into the very fabric of British music.
“His body of work stands shoulder to shoulder with formative heroes such as John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ray Davies, a canon that takes in an astonishing 28 studio albums and has earned him multiple Brit Awards, Ivor Novellos and eight Number One records.
Mince, mash and a mission: Big Ange cooks up big change at Live Theatre
For football manager ‘Big Ange’ Postecoglou, sacked by Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest in quick succession, there may be a crumb of comfort to be found at Live Theatre where a play called Big Ange is taking shape.
That he, or at least his nickname, inspired it is the good news.
The bad news (or perhaps not) is that it isn’t about him - or even football.
In a break from rehearsal, writer and director Jamie Eastlake, whose last play Gerry and Sewell did have a football backdrop, explained: “I could have sworn there was a dinner lady called Big Ange at my school.”
If there wasn’t, perhaps there should have been. He scribbled it in his notebook as an idea, the dinner lady who wants to change the world.
Jamie’s imagined Big Ange is a Londoner who fled to the North East 20 years ago and now finds herself trying to make a difference over the mince and mash in a Newcastle school.
“This may be the maddest thing that’s ever been on Live Theatre’s stage,” Jamie had confided as he entered the rehearsal room.
David Almond nominated for world’s biggest children’s literature prize
Celebrated North East author David Almond has been nominated for the 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for children’s literature.
The much-loved writer from Gateshead, who came to international attention with Skellig in 1998, joins 262 other nominees from 74 countries and regions, forming what organisers describe as one of the most comprehensive lists of leading children’s authors and reading promoters in the world.
“I’m really delighted and honoured to be nominated,” he said. “It’s one of the world’s most important literary awards and the nominees come from all parts of the globe.
“I’ve been nominated several times before. It’s great not just for me, but for our region, too. Most of my work is set here in the North East, and is written in northeastern language and rhythm.”
Among the many awards David has already won are the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Whitbread Children’s Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the French Prix Sorcières.
Created in 2002 by the Swedish government to promote every child’s right to great stories, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award recognises outstanding contributions to children’s and young adult literature. Worth five million Swedish kronor (around £400,000), it is the largest award of its kind.
David added: “It highlights the cultural importance of literature for children and young people, and the importance of children’s lives and dreams... The best books for the young can be things of beauty, humour, strangeness, darkness and light.”
The winner will be announced in April 2026.
Budding artists prepare ground for artwork in the park
Children have been working with artist Anna Chapman Parker who has been commissioned to create a new public artwork to be installed in Berwick’s Castle Vale Park.
Blue plaque honour for Tyneside scientist with global legacy
A pioneering environmental scientist who won international recognition for his work has been honoured in the Tyneside town where he was born.
The late Prof Paul Younger, from Hebburn, was regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts in the remediation of pollution associated with mining and led the research team which won Newcastle University its first Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education in 2005.
Prof Younger, also an accomplished musician and linguist, was a driving force behind the bid to make Newcastle a City of Science and Technology and led the pioneering research to drill for geothermal energy in the heart of Newcastle.
Now a blue plaque has been unveiled by South Tyneside Council at the energy centre named after him, which opened in the centre of Hebburn a year ago.
It reads: “Paul Younger 1962–2018. Pioneering hydrogeologist, environmental engineer and writer. Internationally renowned for his expertise with mine water remediation and renewable energy.”
Soprano Elin on La bohème and our 'beautiful' Theatre Royal
It has been called a classic tale of tragic romance and a great opera for beginners and regulars alike.
Puccini’s La bohème got a mixed reaction when first performed in Italy in 1896 – the UK premiere came the following year in Manchester – but it has stood the test of time and is an Opera North ‘banker’.
It must be. It accounts for three of the five November performances at the Theatre Royal and there will be few, if any, tickets left unsold at ‘curtain up’.
And as for dry eyes…
“It’s harrowing,” agrees soprano Elin Pritchard who will share the role of Musetta in Newcastle.
“I’m a person who gets immersed when I see opera and can cry like a baby. And this is a heartbreaking story, heightened by one of the most incredible operatic scores ever written.”
The spy who listened from his Berwick garden
When retired archaeologist Lindsay Allason-Jones moved into the house she had bought, she was to find that it came with an intriguing extra.
Buried in the garden in Castle Terrace in Berwick was what appeared to be a Second World War Anderson air raid shelter.
Three million of these shelters, made from galvanised bolted-together metal sheets, were installed in backyards and gardens.
In true archaeological tradition, digging began around Lindsay’s shelter.
What sparked her interest was that the structure was built to much stronger specifications than an Anderson version, using more concrete and bricks than the average civilian would have been able to access in wartime.
The discovery of a maker’s metal plate confirmed that it was not an Anderson, but an expensive Wilmot Fortress shelter.
That was the signal for a research project by Lindsay, which began by establishing the identity of the occupant of the house when the shelter was built.
It was Captain Gibson Ferrier Steven, who was well known in Berwick as a wireless whizz.
The pleasure and pain of Hawkeys Lane - in Plasticine
The Globe Gallery’s contribution to the North Shields 800th anniversary celebrations is many things but principally it is a lot of fun. How could it not be when the main components are nostalgia and Plasticine?
It’s a vivid reminder that William Harbutt, who invented the versatile modelling clay (loved by generations of children and tolerated by their exasperated mums for being trodden into goodness knows how many carpets), was born in North Shields in 1844.
I say ‘reminder’ but for many visitors this will be a revelation. I mean, who knew?
It’s true that Mr Harbutt perfected his modelling clay recipe (a closely guarded secret) in later life, after moving to Bath where he became head of the city’s School of Art & Design, but it’s a claim to fame that North Shields should cling to as tenaciously as Plasticine to Axminster.
Plasticine may have been invented for art students but for many of us, here and overseas, it was an essential ingredient of childhood.
Newcastle prepares for a journey through light and space in December
A new large-scale light and art event will make its debut in Newcastle as Christmas time gets underway, transforming part of the city centre into a night-time trail of projections, performance and installations.
Enchanted City: From City Streets To Cosmic Skies will run from December 11-14 on Northumbria University’s City Campus. Delivered by Newcastle City Council, the four-night event will bring together artists from across the region, the UK and beyond for a series of works exploring light, space and imagination.
Step back in time (if you dare) for a traditional Halloween at Beamish this weekend
There’s still time to enjoy a half term with a difference at Beamish, where the final days of the museum’s folklore-themed week will be dedicated to the history of Halloween.
