Cultured. On Sunday 24.05.26
Sycamore Gap, Sunderland’s glass legacy, Star Wars, spongey sweet treats and a cosy crime page turner are all on the weekend menu
Hi and welcome to this week’s Cultured. On Sunday - which could just as easily have been titled: Dave’s Been Busy while Sam’s Been on Holiday.
David Whetstone has been all over the patch this week, bringing news of the winner of the Sycamore Gap commission - notably the only shortlisted proposal with North East roots - alongside a final look around Sunderland’s National Glass Centre before its summer closure.
He’s also been finding out more about the next chapter for The Cultural Spring after fresh funding confirmed a further three years for the Sunderland and South Tyneside project which aims to bring creative opportunities to communities where engagement with the arts has traditionally been low.
Elsewhere, photographer Steve Ellwood opens up the archive drawers for My Life Through a Lens, Collected Books has a cosy crime recommendation with a twist, and Boxing Clever heads to a galaxy far, far away for a gritty and brilliant Star Wars spin-off.
And for your final course, this week’s Sunday Plate comes courtesy of Connor Wilson at The Kirkstyle Inn who serves up a sweet and spongey treat in the form of madeleines.
I’ll get out of your way…
Winner of Sycamore Gap commission announced
So The People’s Tree it is…
Via a national programme of participation, people will be invited to record their reflections on their own relationships with trees and nature.
Alongside these recordings, a digital soundtrack will be created by scanning the tree’s rings.
The final compilation of stories and audio will be presented through exhibitions and workshops held to the north, south, east and west of Sycamore Gap.
Sections of some of the seasoned wood will be used for artworks created by communities and local artists as they connect to nature, landscapes and the tree.
The project will culminate in a sound sculpture which will include a time capsule for the tree (including some of its wood and the living archive of stories and nature sounds) to be sited along Hadrian’s Wall at an accessible location chosen by stakeholders and communities.
Work on the commission will begin this summer, with Helix Arts and GKA working with the National Trust, local partners and communities along Hadrian’s Wall, and is expected to be finished by autumn 2027.
Helix Arts director Cheryl Gavin said: “To be chosen by both the public and the judging panel feels phenomenal.
National Glass Centre's fabulous if fragile last hurrah
While hope and expectation swirl around the opportunities the Crown Studios might bring to Sunderland and the wider region, or indeed the soon-to-open Culture House, quite different emotions are stirred elsewhere.
It is difficult to walk around the swansong exhibition at the National Glass Centre (NGC) without a pang of sadness.
Called The Graduates, it’s a fabulous showcase for the versatility of glass and the skill of the artists who have explored its potential as a medium, pushing it in directions you wouldn’t have thought possible.
Those credited on the labels accompanying each extraordinary exhibit are people who studied or have taught in this place where art and industry have come together.
Some of them live and work in the area, sustained by the NGC on the doorstep.
Others, having learned their craft, went out into the world, ambassadors for Sunderland and its unrivalled facilities for glass making – soon to be surrendered when the building closes for good at the end of the month.
Three more inspiring years for The Cultural Spring
The leaflet introducing The Cultural Spring couldn’t have dropped through Dennis O’Brien’s letterbox in South Tyneside at a more opportune moment.
Daydreaming at work recently, it had struck him that he needed to do something creative. He was 63. Life is short.
“I’d always wanted to do something creative but with family and work, creative stuff gets put on the back burner – but it was always in the back of my mind,” he reflects.
“That leaflet was like something… I’ll call it the universe, saying it’s time for you to fulfil your dreams.”
We’ll come back to Dennis because he embodies all that can have been hoped for by those who set up The Cultural Spring from small beginnings.
In its South Shields headquarters, project director Emma Horsman and publicist Rob Lawson (both involved from the start) can reflect on an action-packed past while looking to the future.
We’ve been asking North East-based photographers to open up their archives and select two handfuls of images which encapsulate life as they’ve captured it.
Note: This My Life Through a Lens feature was first published during Cultured. North East’s time as the arts and culture section of regional subscription platform, The QT (Feb to Jul 2024)
It was during the 1980s when 70-year-old Steve Ellwood started taking photographs of Newcastle’s architecture.
“As a result of the mass demolition of buildings in Newcastle to make way for the Eldon Square Shopping Centre, I started to find it difficult to recall some of the buildings that I had witnessed pre 1970s,” he says.
“In an effort to start recording the existing buildings I created a photograph archive which I then put in the public domain via the internet.”
Happy to describe himself as an amateur photographer, the retired civil servant has shied away from requests to take wedding photos over the years, saying “The responsibility for a once in a life occasion has always put me off!”
Steve’s photography has, however, featured in the three books he has authored, Newcastle in 50 Buildings, River Tyne and 50 Gems of Northumberland.
“My photography relates mainly to architecture and maritime craft,” he says. “The maritime angle comes from being a cadet engineering officer on deep sea trawlers in Hull during my late teens.
“I also try to capture events of importance.”
Founded by Emma Hamlett, Collected Books is an independent bookshop in Durham, with two floors of books to browse as well as coffee, wine, and cake to enjoy. They specialise in writing by women but stock all genres of fiction and non-fiction as well as books for kids, YA titles, poetry, and classics.
This week’s recommendation is the perfect long weekend read – a bit of cosy crime with a difference that delivers the comfort of the familiar with a dash of the unexpected: Jess Kidd’s Murder at the Spirit Lounge.
Jess Kidd was brought up in London as part of a large family from County Mayo and has been praised for her unique fictional voice. She won the Costa Short Story Award in 2016 and been shortlisted for numerous other prizes. Her novels include Things in Jars, The Night Ship and The Hoarder which, along with her debut Himself, was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick.
In the Spring of 2025, Kidd published the first in a series featuring nun-turned-detective, Nora Breen, Murder at Gulls Nest. A Carmelite sister and nurse for three decades, she returns to the world to investigate the disappearance of a novice sister. The 1950s seaside setting, and the grim boarding house she lives in (also home to a hungry seagull she names Father Conway) provide intriguing and atmospheric settings for the drama to unfold.
In the second book in the series, Murder at the Spirit Lounge, Nora finds her customary early morning seaside walk rudely interrupted: she’s been summoned, with Detective Inspector Rideout, to the home of Doreen Chimes, Gore-on-Sea’s resident medium. Chimes would like to report a robbery - and to personally invite Rideout to that evening’s private séance. It’s an invitation he will regret accepting: the evening ends in a suspiciously spooky murder. And in the coming days, more of the attendees will find themselves in peril. Can Nora figure out who - or what - is behind these spectral killings before it’s too late?
Nora Breen walks the shoreline, along the length of the deserted December beach. It is some form of lunacy that has her up and out at first light, every morning, traipsing along the tide’s ragged hem, whatever the weather. Whether the sky is a crisp laundry-day blue, or dawn arrives dark and drear. Wind-lashed, rain-drench, frozen to the bone, she doesn’t care. It’s an exhilarating communion.
Kidd has moved into the pretty crowded ”cosy crime” genre, but has brought with her the lyrical prose and sinister undertones that were a feature of her earlier, more gothic novels, brilliantly balancing a delightful wit and charm with an unsettling sense of the uncanny.
There is a gentle teasing in Kidd’s writing – how can you not laugh at a setting for murder named Gore-on-Sea?! – and all the charm that you would expect and want from cosy crime, but Nora is a deeply interesting protagonist, and a wish to know her better and see how her relationships in the seaside town develop will keep us all hooked, just as much as the grizzly mysteries she is called on to solve.
Jess Kidd will be at Collected Books on Monday, June 1 for what promises to be an entertaining evening discussing crime and nuns! Get your tickets for the event here and order a copy of the book here.
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s choice is a gritty and brilliant Star Wars story everyone should try.
When Disney bought Lucasfilm, the company behind the Star Wars films, for c£2.5bn in 2012 they were very open about their intention to milk the galactic cash cow for every penny they could.
Since then no stone in the Galaxy far, far away has gone unturned in the quest to fill every gap in the narrative and tell any story.
We’ve had three film sequels, three standalone movies and (by my count) 15 live action or animated TV shows. Unfortunately, the main thing they all have in common is a sense of diminishing returns, critically if not financially.
The exception to this depressing trend is the show Andor, which tells the story of the birth of the Rebellion, the uprising against the evil Empire. Its two seasons take us up to the Rogue One standalone film, which is effectively a prequel to the Original 1977 Star Wars movie that started the cultural phenomenon in the first place.
The Sunday Plate sees chefs from kitchens across the North East share a recipe for you to try at home - a taste of the region’s food scene, one dish/treat at a time.
This week’s suggestion comes from the kitchen of the The Kirkstyle Inn, in Slaggyford, Northumberland and head chef Connor Wilson, who has chosen to share a recipe for delicate madeleines.
He says: “Madeleines make a great treat and are surprisingly simple to make. You could even make them with the kids. The spices you choose and flavouring you add can also be adjusted to your preferences.
“It is best to serve them warm, as fresh from the oven as possible, but the mix will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.”
Ingredients
Makes 12-14 Madeleines
For the sponge:
2 eggs
100g sugar
35g honey
120g plain flour
7g baking powder
60g butter
35g whole milk
2g salt
For the syrup:
100g sugar
100g water
2 cloves
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
Zest of one orange
½ cm piece of ginger
For the sugar dusting:
100g caster sugar
2g star anise
2g cinnamon
1g cloves
Method
For the sponge:
1. Whisk together the eggs, sugar, honey and salt thoroughly.
2. Warm the butter and milk together, until just above 38C.
3. Mix the flour and baking powder, and beat into the egg mix, one third at a time.
4. Fold in the warmed milk and butter.
5. Leave this mix covered in the fridge overnight to rest.
6. Preheat the oven to 200C.
7. Lightly grease a madeleine tin (you could use a muffin tin if you don’t have one, but the madeleines shape gives it a lovely crispness to the outside with a soft spongy centre).
8. Place a tablespoon full of the mixture into each of the buttered holes in the madeleine tin, and place in the oven for 8-10 minutes, until risen and golden.
For the syrup:
1. Combine all of the ingredients together in a heavy pan, bring to a simmer and reduce until syrupy, leave to infuse for half an hour and then strain. Store this in a squeezy bottle.
For the dusting:
1. Blend all ingredients together in a spice grinder.
2. Pass through a fairly coarse sieve to make sure there aren’t big chunks of the spices.
To finish:
1. Once the madeleines have cooled just enough to handle, take them out of the tin and put them onto a plate.
2. Sprinkle with the syrup, and dip one side into the spiced sugar.
3. Serve warm