Photographer Andrew Gill will share his fascination with running water in his solo exhibition at The Friends Community Hub, on Skinnergate in Darlington. Rivers have fascinated many people and Andrew’s photography reflects this fascination. He considers water ” the driving force of all nature, and that’s what inspires me to get outdoors and capture its raw beauty. I love to take my time to capture the essence of the flowing water taking in the sounds is peaceful.”

We’re delighted that River Tees: Source to Sea is on display in the new exhibition space at the the Friends Community Hub on Skinnergate in Darlington. There’s no charge to view the exhibition which is open from 10am to 2pm daily on Saturday 3 September and from Monday 5th to Friday 9th September 2022. We hope you enjoy Andrew’s exhibition at The Friends Community Hub and to see other exhibitions on display in the months to come.

Autumn courses at The Bridge Centre for Visual Arts start in the week commencing Monday 19th September and finish in the week ending Friday 2nd December 2022. These enjoyable courses are open to adults and you can find out if they’re for you by e-mailing the artist in advance of the first session, the images above show their e-mail addresses, or just pop along in week one and speak to them to find out more. There’s so much happening at The Bridge Centre for Visual Arts, and lots of options to explore creative activity including ceramic, drawing, jewellery, life drawing, portraiture, pastels, watercolour drawing and painting.

Location:
Friends Community Hub
6 Skinnergate,
Darlington
DL3 7NB

Dates and times:
Saturday 13th August 10am-4pm
Saturday 20th August 10am-4pm
Saturday 27th August 10am-4pm

FREE Workshops:

Saturday 13th August:

Jade Blood: Kitchen Table Printing 10am-4pm
Adrian Moule: Print Bike 10am-1pm

Saturday 20th August:

Jade Blood: Kitchen Table Printing 10am-4pm
Jade Sweeting: Screen printing 10am-4pm
John James Perangie: Fabric Applique Printing 1pm-4pm

Saturday 27th August:

Jade Sweeting: Screen printing 10am-4pm
Jade Blood: Kitchen Table Printing 10am-4pm

These events form part of Middlesbrough Art Weekender and are supported by Creative Darlington. More information on the activity you can explore with artists on Pop-Up Print Saturdays this Autumn in Darlington below, and we hope you enjoy them if you have a go!

The Middlesbrough Art Weekender Team have partnered up with local businesses in Darlington near to the Friends Community Hub site, to make printmaking even tastier. Bakerman will be providing some delicious sweet treats for participants and Echo3 have a limited number of tokens for a free drink there.

Saturday 13th, 20th, 27th: 10am-4pm
Jade Blood hosts all ages workshops which encourage participants to explore natural and
waste materials; eco-dying and kitchen cupboard print making over these Saturdays,
Jade will set up various action stations of easy print methods where you can up-cycle your
clothing or make a banner, flags and customise a tote bag or design your own patches!
Activities include:
• Food waste dyes- try out using paints made from food- paint a banner, or a flag
• Simple block printing- depending on how much time you have, come and try simple
block printing
• Quick stencil print- using sticky back plastic- you can create a one off stencil for
fabric or paper.
• Statement embroidery- A relaxing, slow and social process , there will be templates
inspired by the Quaker principles provided for you to up-cycle your pre-existing
items or you can do your own thing and embroider patches and flags!

Saturday 13th August 10am-1pm
Adrian Moule will be onsite with his print bike printing from a preexisting plate, work with
Adrian to ink the plate yourself and put it through the press. This print is then yours to take
away and is limited to an edition of 70.

Saturday 20th, 27th August 10am-4pm
Jade Sweeting will be bringing pre made stencils to the workshops with a mixture of text
and image that can be printed onto fabric, t-shirts, totes or paper. Jade will guide you
through the process of screen printing from preparing the screen to printing and finally
drying the artwork which you can then take away with you.

Saturday 20th August 1pm-4pm
John James Perangie will deliver an appliqué workshop for all ages, exploring how you
can use existing fabrics to layer up and print with onto paper, fabric, t shirts and totes.
If you’ve only got an hour, you can pop in and try out just one of the things but If you have
the whole afternoon, you could try out all of these methods and create your own super
layered wearable or displayable piece!

Make Music Day got in touch with Creative Darlington earlier this year and on 21 June 2022 we marked Darlington as a Great Music Place, with a day celebrating all that music brings to our lives. The day began with children from three Darlington schools singing in the Market Square, followed by an early evening concert coordinated by Durham Music Service at Darlington Hippodrome, which attracted hundreds of people and showcased music from ensembles across Darlington and County Durham. A Musical Menagerie evening concert sharing music by some of the artists and bands who’re part of The Forum Music School drew a capacity audience to The Forum Music Studios and brought our Great Music Place 2022 Make Music Day to a close.

A big thank you to all the artists, bands, children and young people, Darlington Town Centre Partnership and Events service, Durham Music Service, Darlington Hippodrome, The Forum Music Studios and all those people who helped events here happen, and to the audiences who celebrated music of many different types.

‘It was a very successful event and the organisers from Make Music Day said it was an excellent event that showcased talent from all ages and genres. The students gained live performance experience, and all felt it had helped gain more confidence in live performance.’ Allison Mckay, Executive Director, The Forum Music Studios

Make Music Day are planning to share a video of some of the activity in Darlington shortly, we’ll update via this website when you can see this, and hope you’ll get in touch if you have any ideas for how Darlington might mark Make Music Day on 21 June 2023, wherein music of any type can be celebrated, as long as it can be seen and heard for free and it takes place on that date.

Women X is an exciting, fresh short film festival based in the North East of England, celebrating the achievements of emerging and established talent from women and non-binary directors, writers, and producers. Our programme strives to include stories that challenge the narrative set by mainstream media, exploring both fictional and real stories that open our eyes, break our hearts, make us laugh, and question our perceptions.

Dates

2^nd – 4^th September (in person)

(Online attendees can catch up with films online and watch roundtable discussions)

Locations

Darlington Hippodrome, Darlington

Online, Leeds Film Player

Women X will display a programme of 40+ short films across 6 strands which combines various genres and storytelling forms including comedy, horror, experimental and a special showcase of North East talent. Excitingly, with a whole screening dedicated to films created by women in the North East and curated by award winning Darlington filmmaker, Caris Rianne who is the director behind the festival.

Special programme highlights include PRAGMA: PRAGMA is an off-beat romantic comedy, set in a Post Graduate Partnering Programme, led by the world’s leading practitioner in sustainable love. We follow our protagonist Willow on a series of hilariously intense compatibility assessments lead by Dr Francis (Nick Mohammed) with an onslaught of outrageous suitors. She is left caught between a rock and a hard place asking herself the ultimate question; should you trust science or trust your heart (or let’s be honest…burning loins)? Directed by Ellie Heydon,  who has been featured at the festival each year since 2020, and executive produced by Ted Lasso favourites Phil Dunster and Jason Sudekis

SNUFF: A woman in the middle of an affair arrives home to find her wife making a snuff film in their living room. Directed by Louise Nesbitt and starring DERRY GIRLS favourite Saoirse Monica-Jackson

LA GROGNE: A child by all means tries to gain her father’s affection, but the family dog proves to be a fierce rival. La grogne is a short animated film, a disquieting fable with dark humour, portraying the hurdles to maintain family equilibrium. Directed by Alisi Telengut, a returning award winning filmmaker from the 2021 festival, whose work was also showcased at Sundance Film Festival.

The main focus is to allow space for new creatives to be spotlighted with our awards celebrating the achievements of both student and first-time filmmakers. The official programme announcement will take place on 27th July.

This year the festival will be held at Darlington Hippodrome [2^nd – 4^th September] and online allowing people to either attend in person or purchase an online pass where they can enjoy the films from home.

The 3^rd edition of Women X will also include two special industry talks and workshops focusing on developing career pathways. Live events involve a fun interactive networking session of matchmaking and quick chats, a filmography card game challenge sponsored by Cinephile, a marketplace stand from Spilt Milk Press, a 00’s inspired film quiz.

The award show, equipped with a very on brand pink carpet, is sponsored by Flamingo Heights, Fulwell73 and No Drama who donated prizes such as mentoring, studio space and equipment hire for winners. Festival Partners this year include Film and TV Charity, Letterboxd, Breaking The Lens, Screen Queens, Superyaki, I Like Networking, Invisible Women, Leeds International Film Festival, Norwich International Film Festival, and many others. The festival is also sponsored by Darlington for Culture.

Film lovers can also check out the Women X Film Festival Podcast where the team are sharing episodes on not only what it takes to have your film selected in the film festival world, but also the behind the scenes of putting the event together. Featuring interviews from local festival friends Durham Film Festival and Sunderland Shorts Film Festival, along with filmmakers featured in the programme.

You can book your tickets here: riannepictures.com/womenx

ABOUT WOMEN X

Since its launch in 2019, Women X has been a fast growing festival with a purpose. With its core focus being to support not only women and non binary filmmakers, but also to cement a new home of film activity in the North East, the independent and volunteer run event has gone from strength to strength attracting some incredible talent from around the world and over 200 film lovers as attendees.

We have focused our efforts on creating a safe and inclusive space for both filmmakers and attendees, valuing elements such as including breaks in between film screenings, no clashes in our scheduled events, accessibility consultancy to improve our methods to be inclusive and incorporating events and activities with a focal point on mental wellbeing.

Our team has grown hugely since we launched the festival, allowing young programmers the opportunity to be part of our film curation, audience development, operations and marketing. Breaking down the barriers for entry level positions into the film festival world and allowing room for fresh ideas and talent. We’ve continued this by partnering with local colleges and sixth forms in Darlington for students to volunteer at the festival to gain some real life experience in film exhibition during their studies.

Tracks is pleased to announce the return of HARK! The Sound of Stories, featuring NEL UNLIT, RADIKAL QUEEN, FAITHFUL JOHANNES and BOB FISCHER!

HARK! is a series of events presenting music inspired by writing. After moving online during lockdowns, HARK!’s return to a live venue features artists who are making music based on stories they’ve overheard, imagined, researched, inherited and written, will be at 7.30pm, on Friday 15th July 2022 at The Hullabaloo Theatre, Darlington. Tickets £10. Doors at 7pm.

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Nel Unlit are a group of songwriters, storytellers and musicians who have their roots in the North-East of England and Northern Ireland. Their debut album Wake for the Dreaming (2020, Butterfly Effect) was a concept album based on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels. Their latest album, Ephemera; or, Tosh and the girl (2022, Butterfly Effect) is a unique character study of a family in crisis in the North East, drawing on a mix of overheard stories, painful family memories and overactive imaginations. It presents the story of Tosh, a floundering single father and serial hoarder, and explores his co-dependent paternal partnership with his teenage daughter and his fractured relationship with her estranged mother. It was originally released with accompanying film, readalong short story and art exhibition. Now the group are bringing this masterpiece of cinematically sweeping musical storytelling to life live at HARK.

Radikal Queen is the Northeast’s premier Black spoken word artist, using words that dance to original Black music to communicate with people from diverse cultures, and an award-winning artist and cultural activist whose ethos is: bringing the margins to the centre. Radikal Queen is an initiate within an African Indigenous lineage of those who use mystical story as medicine to the masses — often known as “Griot” in the west. Her creative influences outside of the lineage of Elders and Ancestors within her traditions include Toni Morisson, Alice Walker, Buchi Emecheta, Gil-Scott Heron, Nina Simone, Betty Davis, and Mama Maya Angelou. Her show JazzWitch is virtual journey through time, and showcases the stories and the art of the BlacQueer Jazz and Blues pioneers who have been historically vilified, ostracised… and then colonised, incorporates song, immersive digital media, and poetry — all set to Jazz and Blues.

Faithful Johannes is a Durham artist who makes spoken word songs and its accompanying electronic music. He has been described as ‘The Alan Bennett of Hip Hop’ (Electronic Sound Magazine) and as the ‘middle of a venn diagram where the four circles are Anticon Records, Alan Bennett, Leonard Cohen and Frank Sidebottom’ (Slow Decades). He incorporates an ironing board and large signs in his shows, and often gives out discrete notes to audience members. He brought out his second album, the tragicomic story of Ken & Jean, in 2021, about a relationship between a prankster and the woman who grows tired of his schemes, and is currently working on a series of songs that form an adaptation of Durham writer Sid Chaplin’s novella The Thin Seam. He will be premiering one of these songs at HARK! He is influenced by storytelling musicians such as Owen Ashworth, Serengeti and Billy Woods, as well as writers such as Sid Chaplin, Jack Common, Haruki Murakami, Flann O Brien, Proust and Nabakov, and the poetry of Caroline Bird.

An additional reading will be provided by Bob Fischer, a Teesside writer specialising in the stranger corners of British popular culture. He writes for Fortean Times, Electronic Sound and Doctor Who Magazine.
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With Darlington Library on Crown Street currently undergoing renovations and expected to reopen in full in 2023, HARK! has found a new home at The Hullabaloo Theatre, where the bookish atmosphere will be provided by HEAD Bookshop (Post House Wynd).

HEAD will be bringing a selection of books and music connected to the show, for the audience to browse and buy during intervals.

Lyrics, readings, and more information about the musicians will also be available for audience members to read in a specially printed programme booklet.

Made possible with the kind support of Arts Council England, The National Lottery & Creative Darlington’

Ticket link https://www.darlingtonhippodrome.co.uk/whats-on/Hark

Darlington’s urban festival Last Train Home returns for the fifth time on Saturday 3rd September. The music and comedy festival supported by Arts Council England, Creative Darlington and Darlington Borough Council takes place in venues located near to Darlington’s main railway station and is programmed to finish in time for audiences to catch the last train home.

This year the festival boasts five stages over three venues, The Forum Music Centre will host the main stage and Hilarity Bites Comedy stage and The Hullabaloo will host NARC magazine stage and the Noisy Daughters stage. Returning to Last Train Home this year is the iconic St Johns Church stage where various mellow acoustic and urban folk artists will be performing.

“We are so excited to be bringing Last Train Home back to Darlington for the fifth year. It’s been a bit of a wild ride with Covid and all of the challenges of setting up, curating and building a new festival from scratch. This year is going to be bigger and better than ever and we really hope to be able to continue the growth of the festival over the next five years!”

Sarah Wilson, Tracks. 

Returning to Last Train Home as headliners of the main stage are psychedelic punk rockers The Lovely Eggs.

“The Lovely Eggs performed at the first ever Last Train Home playing upstairs at the now boarded up and awaiting demolition Hogans pub. It’s been great to see how much the band has grown over the last five years with their recent album “I Am Moron” reaching number 1 in the UK Independent Album Charts and getting loads of amazing press reviews and radio play. It’s exciting to bring them back to Darlington and have them headline at The Forum stage”

Rob Irish, Tracks.

Headlining the St John’s Church stage will be Leeds ones to watch, Sunflower Thieves with their beautiful dream-folk. The duo made Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent longlist in 2020 and have played numerous BBC Introducing Sessions.  Local micro brewery Caps Off will be hosting a pop up bar in the church.

Other artists confirmed in the first wave of announcements are Darlington rising star Luke Royalty, Newcastle folk duo Northering, indie rockers The Rills, electro folk queen Me Lost Me. Plus Komparrison, Wyldest, Sarah Johnsone, Joe Ramsay, Yabba, Callum Pitt, Common Courtesy and Nel Unlit.

More announcements coming very soon, tickets are available now from www.tracksdarlington.co.uk and from Skiddle open to 14+yrs, under 18s must be accompanied by an adult.

Creative Darlington commissioned the Flourish programme, devised by Helix Arts, to support artists in devising and delivering projects close to their heart involving people in Darlington.

A call out for participants was made and the programme began before the outbreak of the Covid-19 Panemdic, with the programme offering advice from Helix Arts, support for artists who submitted fundraising applications, and match funding for proposals through Creative Darlington subject to artists securing additional funding from sources beyond Darlington Borough Council.

Those who engaged with Flourish include Amy Swalwell at TeesDance for the MoveUP programme, with a celebratory sharing of some of the dance pieces generated at Darlington Hippodrome bringing fantastic talent to the stage before an enthusiastic audience on 5th June 2022.

Sarah Li also engaged with Flourish in the creation of Opening The Closet Doors, a film exploring the LGBTQ+ stories from the Darlington Hippodrome archives. A film screening of Opening The Closet Doors is scheduled to take place at Darlington Hippodrome at 7.30pm on 11 August 2022 on a pay what you feel basis.

We want to thank all of the artists who engaged with Flourish, and hope to renew this programme with Helix Arts in 2023/4.

Come and celebrate Pride at the Darlington Hippodrome 11th August 2022 7:30pm with a film screening of ‘Opening the Closet Doors’ which has been made by artist Sarah Li in collaboration with the wonderful, fun and fabulous LGBTQ+ co-authors involved in the project!

Tickets available on a pay what you feel basis here: https://www.darlingtonhippodrome.co.uk/customer/booking?id=461801

The screening will be taking place in the gorgeous auditorium and will be followed by a presentation from some of the people involved in the project. The project is a creative deep dive into the archival material of the @darlingtonhippodrome . We have been searching for LGBTQ+ stories, points of interest and inspiration.

Dressing up is not compulsory but totally welcomed. 

This project is supported by Arts Council England, Darlington Hippodrome, Creative Darlington, LGBT+ NSG, County Durham Community Foundation (The Dover Art Prize), SAN North East and Rianne Pictures.

Thank you to Helix Arts who supported the project throughout the R&D stages of the project as part of the Flourish programme commissioned by Creative Darlington.

Blimey! Lucretia session in the gallery at Darlington Library. Photograph Joanne Coates

With restoration work at Darlington Library underway we’re looking forward to the gallery in Darlington Library reopening in 2023. The gallery shared four exhibitions last year between June and December 2021, including work by Jonny Lancaster, Dawn Broughton, The Darlington Association of Photographers and Dover Art Prize 2019 winning artist, Bethan Maddocks, before the restoration programme began.

A number of artists and groups are lined up to exhibit at Darlington Library once the exhibition programme recommences, and we’re looking forward to sharing their work in the gallery next year.