Cultured. On Sunday
Our weekend edition for longer reads and cultural recommendations
Welcome to Cultured. On Sunday - our new weekend home for longer reads, thoughtful recommendations and a slightly slower take on arts and culture in the North East.
Think features you can enjoy with cuppa, ideas of things to watch, read and see, guest voices (writing, not singing), the odd serving of foodie stuff and doubtless more cultural nuggets we haven’t come up with yet.
Hope you enjoy it!
Sam (Wonfor) and Dave (Whetstone)
Probably making Yorkshire puddings at this very moment
Exciting plans are afoot for Horden’s award-winning Ensemble ’84
New theatre company Ensemble ’84 (the date recalling the national miners’ strike) announced itself publicly in 2024 with a call out to local people to audition.
A period of paid training and the chance to perform was on offer – and if it seemed unlikely it was because this was happening in the former pit village of Horden in County Durham.
Mark Dornford-May, with an impressive record of achievement in theatre, both in this country and South Africa, sat at a trestle table in Horden Methodist Church, whose availability to rent had determined the choice of location for this new venture, and exuded quiet confidence.
This and a friendly demeanour had the effect of winning local trust and eroding scepticism.
An extraordinary opening production last summer of Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht’s classic anti-war play, saw the (mostly) raw County Durham recruits perform alongside actors from the Isango Ensemble, the company Mark formed a quarter of a century ago in a South African township.
Lee Hall, who had tailored his adaptation of the play for Horden, took a bow on opening night which ended, like every other performance, with tumultuous applause.
There were rave reviews (local and national) and late last year the company was rewarded with an unprecedented three North East Culture Awards. There was even a revival at Newcastle’s Live Theatre.
And just to show the Brecht wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan, the company followed up with a play of its own, Pits, People and Players, drawing on local stories and explaining how the village’s fortunes, for better or worse, have been tied to coal.
In front of a home audience, the rookie actors from County Durham showed they could go it alone.
So what happened next… and what of the future?
Time Travelling on the Tube
A childhood spent in TV studios, cutting rooms, and the odd Soho snooker hall offers Sam Wonfor a pretty special back catalogue of memories, which she revisited for a series of nostalgic features, first published in North East subscription platform, The QT.
In October 2022, me and my Dad were sitting in a hospital waiting room at the Freeman in Newcastle.
We’d spent a lot of time in those places during the few months before and were becoming pretty adept at passing the time rather than wasting it.
He’d want me to say he got canny good at knocking a sudoku out of the park, but mostly we just found ourselves looking back on excellent memories with laughter and tears (often both together) while getting rinsed by Costa.
Classic family holiday moments and recollections of Christmas chaos blended with top drawer anecdotes featuring some of the biggest stars on the planet.
I should have said. My Mum and Dad, Andrea and Geoff Wonfor, were in the telly business.
They met at Tyne Tees TV on City Road in Newcastle in the early 1970s and spent much of the next 15 years at the epicentre of what you’d have to consider as the channel’s golden era.
That period saw TTTV pump out series for both regional and network TV like it was going out of fashion.
Lynne Jackaman's rock and soul dream
That Lynne Jackaman laid down the tracks for critically acclaimed solo debut One Shot in the heart of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, means so much to a true student of rock, soul and Americana. Realising her ambition in the same room that’s inspired everyone from Aretha Franklin to Alica Keys and Otis Redding to Wilson Pickett made for a life-affirming experience and added true authenticity to a deeply personal project.
“There were so many legendary musicians there and I was fortunate to meet some of my heroes,” recalls Lynne as she looks back fondly on One Shot’s glorious evolution. “In terms of a lifetime ambition and a significant career goal, cutting a record at FAME Studios was a big box ticked.”
Although those treasured memories only seem like yesterday, Muscle Shoals was more than six years ago. And although Lynne’s excited to give One Shot one more shot, as she revives a weighty record denied its initial live flush by a global pandemic, her focus is firmly on the future. Four UK headline shows in February — including a hotly anticipated stop at Newcastle’s Cluny — afford a generational talent the opportunity to celebrate a truly transformational album and yet it’s what lies ahead, rather than what’s coloured her past, that’s getting the creative juices flowing.
Helen Stanton is the owner of FORUM Books, Corbridge the Bound Whitley Bay and The Accidental Bookshop in Alnwick and has kindly agreed to keep us in the know when it comes to good reads to grab.
This week’s recommendation: The Boy From the Sea by Garrett Carr (Picador)
Helen says: Small towns and big hearts are alive in Garrett Carr’s The Boy From The Sea - a brilliantly moving tale of an abandoned baby who rocks a small Irish town, bringing together a community - and igniting lifelong rivalries.
In 1973 on the west coast of Ireland, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Ambrose, a local fisherman, is far more interested in who he will become and – with a curious community looking on – takes the baby home and adopts him.
But for Declan, Ambrose’s young son, this arrival is surely bad news, a good deed with rippling ramifications. The women are wonderful too - Ambrose’s more than stoic wife Christine and her sister Phyllis are acutely relatable.
And the small fishing town in Donegal Bay has its own voice, a stalwart narrator, gentle and insightful into the challenges of a changing fishing industry - quotas and more commercial, larger boats - and the impact on the folk who live there.
Simultaneously compassionate, lyrical, vivid, loving and genuinely lovely The Boy From The Sea is simply a great read.
And Garrett Carr will be at The Bound bookshop in Whitley Bay on Tuesday, February 3 for an in-person event which begins at 7pm. Tickets here.
Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – is brimming with ideas for your next box set binge. This week’s pick was either Netflix’s biggest hit of 2025 or 1987 depending on how immersed you are in it.
There aren’t many things that can unite our family around the TV these days, at least without the additional lure of hot food and snacks.
An impressive showing by England at this summer’s World Cup might have an outside chance. At a stretch a Mars landing could possibly draw our collective attention, but realistically only if the crew were then involved in some sort of Taskmaster style competition after arriving on the new planet.
The fifth and final season of Stranger Things was always going to be a stone cold banker though, and indeed the dropping (as the kids say) of each of its three volumes was greeted by a packed front room over the festive break.
Stranger Things is a Netflix science-fiction horror mash up set in the 1980s, which pits a group of children against all manner of evils that are trying to invade their home town of Hawkins, and ultimately destroy the world.
It’s an incredible series, with characters that are ridiculously easy to root for and elaborate, myriad plotlines that crash together towards the end of each season like some sort of synth based, leg warmer adorned jazz.
Leaving Hjem for a new home
When Alex Nietosvuori and Ally Thompson-Nietosvuori opened a fine dining restaurant in the Northumberland village of Wall in May 2019, they were clear about what they wanted to achieve: a restaurant rooted in place, season and identity, offering a level of cooking more commonly associated with cities than rural villages.
Based in the longstanding Hadrian Pub, Restaurant Hjem opened its doors in May 2019, named for the word that means ‘home’ in both Swedish and Northumbrian dialect. It was an intentional choice, reflecting Alex’s Scandinavian heritage and Ally’s North East roots, but also their shared ambition to create something new together.
What followed over the next six years was a journey defined by creativity, resilience and growth - culminating in Northumberland’s first Michelin star, awarded just 18 months after opening.
Looking back now, as Hjem enjoys a six-month residency at South Causey Inn, in County Durham - and work continues on their next permanent home, Restaurant Freyja - both Alex and Ally speak warmly about what those years in Wall gave them.
We've been asking North East photographers to open up their archives and select a double handful of images which encapsulate life as they've captured it
Michael Bailey, 53, grew up in South East Northumberland and now lives in North Tyneside.
A digital marketer, designer and musician, the 51-year-old remembers taking his first photos on a school trip to France when he was 12 – using the bulk of his precious 24 shots attempting to get abstract close-up photos of waves on the beach.
“Meanwhile all my classmates were – quite sensibly – taking photos of each other standing in front of châteaus,” he says.
Michael blames/credits his dad for getting him interested in looking at the world through a lens.
“When I was a kid we used to head out for the evening with his Canon SLR to Newcastle, or somewhere rural to take photos.
“I can’t say I understood any of the theory behind it, but it was always a great adventure and I loved it. I remember taking long exposures above a motorway somewhere, and it was very exciting. Great memories.”
