Cultured. On Sunday 05.07.26
From Tish Murtha's lens to the towns hoping to make cultural history. Welcome to our weekend edition
Hello and thanks for joining us for this week’s Cultured. On Sunday.
This week we’re celebrating creativity in all sorts of forms.
David Whetstone previews a major exhibition of Tish Murtha’s photography at BALTIC through a conversation with her daughter, Ella before taking us into the workshops where preparations are well underway for this year’s South Tyneside Parade.
Elsewhere, we’ve gathered together all 19 North East postcards submitted as part of the region’s bid to become the UK’s first Town of Culture, and David also chats to North East writer Louise Powell about her debut novel, Underdogs…. which doubles as our book recommendation for this week.
Happy end of the weekend!
Baltic gives Tish Murtha recognition she deserves
An exhibition at Baltic of photographs by Tish Murtha seems long overdue but now that it’s here you could hardly argue they’ve stinted in acknowledging her achievements.
A sliver of one of her photos of the Elswick kids she immortalised, grubby fingered and wistful, runs up the outside of the building.
And inside… well, wow!
A touching photo you could almost now call famous, capturing two children in a moment of endearment, greets you as you enter the Level 3 gallery, blown up huge.
Tish can bring a lump to your throat even on a modest scale, but this…
Ella Murtha, Tish’s daughter, laughs when asked if she’s ever seen her mother’s work this big. “Absolutely not. It’s incredible.”
As for her mother’s likely response to this magnificent treatment of her work. “I genuinely don’t know.
“I hope she’d be happy because she took these pictures for a reason. In that moment, she thought something was important enough to document.”
Tish Murtha was a day short of her 57th birthday when she died in 2013, unexpectedly, of a brain aneurysm. Had she lived, she would have recently turned 70.
That her life was relatively short is terribly sad… and sadness seems but a blink away in many of these photos.
Those cute youngsters wrapped up in each other’s presence are also no longer with us.
They were siblings Richard and Louise, two of the kids whose playground was the Elswick of the late 1970s, scheduled for demolition with many crumbling and abandoned houses taking matters into their own hands.
“From everything I’ve heard,” confides Ella, “Richard died - I think in a car crash - and Louise was absolutely devastated. You can see how close they were. I think she fell in with the wrong crowd.”
South Tyneside Parade - a 'massive celebration of creativity'
The season of carnivals and parades is upon us and something is stirring in an industrial unit in South Shields – and this is not a reference to the busy laundry next door.
In these particular council-owned premises, adjacent to the towels and sheets, is evidence of a different sort of activity.
Is that a giant bee? And surely that’s a turtle over there?
I’ve been invited here by Claire Finlay, projects officer for The Cultural Spring – an organisation “committed”, so its website explains, “to making arts and culture an accepted and expected part of people’s lives in Sunderland and South Tyneside.”
It has been pursuing this aim for the past 14 years, a period which has seen political upheaval and a pandemic, and the success of its parades, in particular, can be seen within these brick walls.
Louise's debut novel races out of the traps
The Star Pelaw greyhound racing stadium at Chester-le-Street probably hasn’t hosted a literary launch before – but there’s always a first time and it’s my bet that Underdogs, by Louise Powell, is a novel with legs.
I’m not the only one who thinks it’s worth a punt.
The book’s published this week by John Murray as a JM Original, the imprint it set up in 2015 “to champion distinctive, experimental, genre-defying fiction and non-fiction”.
It comes with ringing endorsements from fellow authors: “Beautiful, heartbreaking, uplifting, funny” – Jenny Knight; “An original, authentic and distinctly northern tale delivered with a strong sense of compassion for its characters and their community” – Shaun Wilson.
And they’re not wrong. Set in the 1990s, in the now vanished world of unlicensed greyhound racing, it introduces us to 10-year-old George and his out-of-work dad, Reg, of whom he is touchingly protective.
On the unlicensed, so-called flapping tracks, there are fortunes to be made or lost.
Louise brings to life a world of winners and losers where George and Reg, struggling to make ends meet, get caught up in a war between bling-laden gambler Bertie and bookmaker Baz.
Written in dialect, Underdogs does indeed have the ring of authenticity.
Postcards from the North East’s Town of Culture hopefuls
Nineteen North East towns are awaiting news of whether they have made the shortlist for the inaugural UK Town of Culture competition after their bids were showcased in a national exhibition in Liverpool.
From Berwick to Redcar, the region is strongly represented among the 398 bids submitted to the inaugural competition.
Ahead of the shortlist announcement, expected by the end of July, each of the bidding towns was invited to create a postcard celebrating its identity and cultural ambitions.
The digital display was unveiled at the Museum of Liverpool this week where Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy viewed the exhibition alongside judging panel chair Sir Phil Redmond. Read more
