Cultured. On Sunday 16.08.26
Our weekend edition telling stories from Northern Soul to panto season via young filmmaking, memorable moments from NOVUM Festival and a postcard from the Edinburgh Fringe
Hello, and welcome to this week’s Cultured. On Sunday.
We’re getting in the groove for The Glasshouse’s Northern and Modern Soul All Dayer with lifelong devotee Paul Conroy, while David Whetstone meets the first intake of the Tyneside Cinema Talent Unit – and grabs a word with Stephen Tompkinson.
Dave also looks back on last weekend’s NOVUM Festival, which turned Newcastle into a giant playground for a few days – and we’ve got a cracking selection of pictures capturing the action too.
Clearly not put off by the mid-30s heat, he also gets prematurely festive with a look ahead to Newcastle Theatre Royal’s 2026 pantomime offering.
Elsewhere, Tony Henderson has the story of a delicate operation to protect rare orchids in County Durham, while Jake Donaldson checks in from Edinburgh after week one of Felt Nowt’s month-long Fringe adventure.
And Forum Books rounds things off with a suitably criminal bookshelf recommendation courtesy of Trevor Wood.
Happy Sunday!
Get ready to dance: Northern Soul heads for The Glasshouse
For Paul Conroy, it began with a transistor radio in the back of his dad’s car.
He was eight or nine and an altar boy opting to wait in the car on a Sunday tea time and listen to the Top 40 rather than take in a third service at church.
He didn’t know what he was hearing - Northern Soul wasn’t even a term he had heard yet.
“All I heard was this one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four beat. It sort of grabbed me,” he remembers.
More than half a century later, it still has him.
On August 30, Paul and Tyneside Soul Promotions will bring a 12-hour Northern and Modern Soul All-Dayer to The Glasshouse in Gateshead, filling two spaces with DJs, dancers and music spanning decades.
For Paul, now 66 and approaching 50 years since he and his friend Toma put on their first event as teenagers, it will also tick off something that has been on his wish list for a very long time.
Talent Unit gives youth a chance at Tyneside Cinema
Tyneside Cinema turns 90 next year but with the launch of its Talent Unit comes evidence that it’s fully committed to the future and youth.
The new initiative, funded by the Sir Graham Wylie Foundation, is designed to equip young people in the North East for careers in film and its many related disciplines.
Danny Baker, producer of the Tyneside Cinema Talent Unit, said 300 people had applied for the year-long course and the job of whittling that number down to 30 had proved impossible.
Consequently the first cohort numbers 33.
Those in attendance at the first gathering got a warm welcome from all, including Nic Greenan, who styles herself custodian of the cinema rather than chief executive and whose idea this was.
The Tyneside, she told them, was a wonderful asset for the North East with a rich history over nine decades but this was history in the making.
“It’s such a wonderful piece of its history that you guys are the first cohort of the Talent Unit,” she said.
“I see you as part of the archive of the building for the next 90 years and I’m super excited to have you here.”
Hurrah! It's panto time. Oh no it isn't, but...
Picture (it shouldn’t be hard) a muggy August day, the kind when most people, considering their wardrobe options, might have been inclined to go for shorts and tee-shirt, leaving the cow suit for another occasion.
But Mick Potts is not ‘most people’ and, for now, we’re in that out-of-kilter land that demands we must imagine the depths of winter at the sweltering height of summer.
It’s called Pantoland and we’re gathered at the Theatre Royal for promotional purposes, Mick Potts, being of that land, displaying admirable professionalism while sweating like a… well, attired as a cow.
Feeling under-dressed in the midst of much showbiz finery, I suggest to Mick that he’s been a Pantoland citizen in these parts for some considerable time.
“It’s been 100 years so there’ll be a huge celebration during this panto, with party poppers, streamers and Champagne,” comes the deadpan reply.
Dominoes and a day of eccentricity in Newcastle
It was, at the very least, a novel incentive for a stroll through Newcastle city centre, taking in sights that might normally pass unnoticed and some that are unlikely to be seen again.
There was a frisson of anticipation among those in the know; among others an air of bemusement.
“You know you’re blocking the road” advised an elderly gent outside the Tyneside Cinema, his words falling on deaf ears as volunteers in green T-shirts hastily unloaded breezeblock ‘dominoes’ from a van.
“What’s it made of?” queried an ominously smirking teenager lurking near the top of John Street.
“Concrete,” declared one of his ominously lurking and smirking mates after an explorative poke.
“Now where are you going?” one of the T-shirted volunteers (there were lots of them) asked a meal delivery rider, his electric bike hemmed in near St James’ Boulevard.
A gap was created and presumably someone’s Sunday lunch did not get cold.
The finale of Newcastle City Council’s summer Novum Festival was both audacious and eccentric, adjectives that could perhaps be applied to the whole programme.
New room to bloom
One of the North East’s most delicate plant conservation operations has seen 200 wild orchids lifted by hand and given a new home.
The native Northern Marsh and Pyramidal Orchids were rescued and replanted at RSPB Saltholme nature reserve at the mouth of the Tees and Seaton Common National Nature Reserve near Seaton Carew, in County Durham.
The 75-hectare Seaton Common site and dunes is important for its wetlands, bird populations and wild flowers.
The operation was a joint venture between the Environment Agency, RSPB Saltholme, Hartlepool Borough Council, British Orchids, The Tees Rivers Trust, Cleveland Naturalist’s Field Club, Natural England and 20 volunteers to safeguard the orchids before future habitat changes.
The flowers were moved from Greenabella Marsh on the Tees because an area of the site will become intertidal habitat as part of the Environment Agency’s Greatham North East Flood Alleviation Scheme. Although there is no legal requirement to relocate the flowers, partners have joined together to protect these rare native plants.
Jake Donaldson, stand up comic and director of North East comedy collective, Felt Nowt reports back after week one of a month-long Edinburgh adventure – which naturally began with a gig on the East Coast mainline.
There are probably easier ways to start a run at the Edinburgh Fringe than performing stand-up on a moving train.
But this is North East comedy collective Felt Nowt, so naturally our first gig of the Fringe took place somewhere on the East Coast Main Line.
A few of us joined Lumo passengers travelling from Newcastle to Edinburgh and gave them an unexpected preview of what was waiting when they arrived. Thankfully, there were many laughs and nobody pulled the emergency cord.
Once in Edinburgh, the slightly less glamorous job began: turning a room above a cocktail bar into a comedy venue. Lights went up. Sound and video projection were installed. Windows were blacked out. Chairs were arranged. Eventually, it looked like a proper Fringe venue.
And then we opened the doors… Read more
This week’s recommendation for your bookshelf comes from Helen Stanton, the owner of FORUM Books, Corbridge the Bound Whitley Bay and The Accidental Bookshop in Alnwick.
I recently went to a packed out Lit and Phil for the launch of Trevor Wood’s latest The Angel of Death. Ian Payne, fresh (ok maybe a few minutes late…) from doing the ITV news, did the honours in firing the questions to a room full of friends, family and fans.
And it’s easy to see why Trevor has such a warm, rapt following. His latest, the third in the series, follows DCI Jack Parker take on a mercy killer taking apparently willing victims on Tyneside and giving our man an ethical conflict.
Since receiving his own early onset dementia diagnosis, assisted dying has been swirling in his own head.
We always get a cracking plot line from Trevor - this might sound heavy stuff but in Trevor’s hands he’s as thoughtful, sensitive and honest about the subject as he is very flipping funny.
You can order The Angel of Death from the Forum Books website, meanwhile you can catch Trevor with fellow crime writer Michael Wood at Whitley Bay Library on August 20, at 7pm.