Cultured. On Sunday 12.07.26
Our weekend edition featuring Nadine Shah and the wider BBC Proms, Van Gogh, Culture House news and a post-SW19 glow
Hello and welcome to this week’s Cultured. On Sunday.
As I mentioned on Friday, this is a slightly slimmer edition than usual following my trip to Wimbledon this week.
I’m still smiling.
Whatever the experiential equivalent of the phrase “don’t meet your heroes” is, I can happily report that it does not apply inside the SW19 postcode. Dreamsville.
Back on home turf, Simon Rushworth talks to Nadine Shah ahead of her BBC Proms North East performance with Royal Northern Sinfonia, David Whetstone takes in the arena-sized Van Gogh experience and brings news of Sunderland’s eagerly anticipated Culture House opening.
Meanwhile, Forum Books has a bookshelf recommendation which explores the surprising stories hidden around Britain’s coastlines.
And that’s the game, set and match served for this week.
Happy Sunday scrolling!
'Proms in the North East has the power to inspire'
Nadine Shah will realise a life’s ambition when she delivers a career-spanning set alongside the Royal Northern Sinfonia at this month’s BBC Proms in the North East. Simon Rushworth finds out more.
Like buses, it seems you wait an entire career for the chance to bring your songs to life alongside classically trained musicians only for two incredible opportunities to come along at once.
“Last month I was part of the It Sounds Like Courage event at the Southbank Centre,” explains Nadine Shah, the Mercury Prize-nominated singer songwriter who hails from South Tyneside. “It was curated by Anoushka Shankar and I performed two of my songs with the London Contemporary Orchestra.
“That was my first experience working with classical musicians and it taught me an invaluable lesson — it’s incredibly tough emotionally to perform your songs in that environment and to hold it together.
“Everything sounded so wonderful that I couldn’t stop crying and it’s impossible to sing and cry at the same time! I was in floods of tears during the rehearsals. But I managed to get through the performance and it means I’m far better prepared for next time. I hope.”
And what a next time.
Later this month Nadine will be challenged to keep her emotions in check for a full set as a career-spanning collection of songs is reimagined by the Royal Northern Sinfonia. A unique show is one of the centrepieces of this year’s BBC Proms in the North East programme — the three-day celebration returns to our region for a fifth time with events in Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough.
Sunflowers and starry nights - sampling Beyond Van Gogh
Venturing into the darkness mid-morning on a typical English summer’s day – which is to say blisteringly hot under a merciless sun – comes as something of a relief, even if the air’s not moving much.
I’ve come to get a first glimpse of Beyond Van Gogh, which as Monty Python would have said, is “something completely different” – at least for Utilita Arena Newcastle, normal stamping ground of rockers, rappers, pop divas and the like.
Although Anna Parry, business development director at international entertainment company Annerin Productions, will tell me: “I always say Van Gogh was the biggest rock star.”
The Dutch painter certainly has posthumous rock star appeal, even if few people took him or his art seriously during his relatively short life.
He sold none of his pictures but painted, in the periods when not wracked with depression, like a man possessed.
Once, as you’ll see in one of the projected quotations that appear and then fade, he wrote: “Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance… I’m going like a painting locomotive.”
Ultimately the locomotive was stopped in its tracks by the man himself. Van Gogh died of self-imposed gunshot wounds on July 29, 1890, aged just 37.
Annerin Productions is a Canadian company that was set up by Anna’s father some 40 years ago, specialising in music shows.
Covid, it seems, was key to this change of direction.
“I’d like to think we were the first to think of anything like this but the idea of immersive shows has been around for over 20 years and, to be honest, it was during the pandemic that we had to think about how we could carry on doing what we do,” Anna tells me.
Opening date announced for new Sunderland venue
Culture House Sunderland, the new venue and library at Keel Square, in the heart of the city’s designated cultural quarter, is to open on Saturday, September 12, it has been announced.
The multi-million-pound building, described as “a living room in the heart of the city”, will host events and exhibitions over four floors and be the home to the new and modern city library.
Councillor Ciera Hudspith, the city council’s portfolio holder for culture, tourism and heritage, said: “Culture House Sunderland will be a fantastic addition to the city, providing a key city centre focal point and a great attraction for both residents and visitors to enjoy.
“The mix of events, exhibitions, top of the range tech, resources and outstanding food offering will make it a standout venue in the region, if not the UK.”
The venue’s opening exhibition, Our Home in Space, will be a collaboration with The Barbican, in London, featuring artworks from around the world that explore Earth’s place in the universe and how everything is connected.
It is described as an immersive showcase that will take viewers from the deep ocean to outer space.
The venue will have adaptable spaces suitable for hosting talks, creative workshops, family events, screenings and performances.
Its programme of events and exhibitions will showcase national and local talent.
This week’s recommendation for your bookshelf - A Brief History of the Coast in 100 Objects by Sally Coulthard comes from Forum Books founder Helen Stanton. You can pick it up at the Corbridge mothership, or one of its sister shops, The Bound Whitley Bay and The Accidental Bookshop in Alnwick.
Helen says: Sally Coulthard is one of those writers who could have their own section in a bookshop such are the many subjects she covers in her books, from nature to geography, social and cultural history. We loved The Short History of the World According to Sheep, The Book of the Frog and The Secret World of Twilight to name a few. In her latest, A Brief History of the Coast in 100 Objects, the natural follow up to A Brief History of the Countryside in 100 Objects, Sally is as warm and bright, funny and engaging and endlessly interesting as ever.
Focussing on one of our favourite places the coast, the book travels the entire British coastline.
Through the lens of 100 carefully selected objects, this treasure chest of a book delves into the myriad ways our coastlines have shaped, and been shaped by, our history, culture, and identity.
From Roman lighthouses to rosary beads, knitted jumpers to Viking slave shackles, each object serves as a portal to a unique story and goes far beyond the traditional seaside holiday to illuminate the coast’s role as a first line of defence, a site of trade, and a catalyst for cultural exchange.
Apparently, whether it’s smugglers’ underpants or sailor’s hoaxes, whale vomit or pickled puffin – it all washes up on the British coast…
We’re looking forward to welcoming Sally to Whitley Bay on Thursday, July 23 to hear more about the enduring magic and significance of our shores.