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.

Darlington has hundreds of artworks within its public collections, including paintings in oil, acrylic, gouache and watercolour paintings, etchings, engravings, screen-prints, collage, embroidery and textile works, ceramics, sculpture and photography. A number of paintings in oil paint or acrylic, can currently be viewed on the Art UK website, which shares work in public collections.

Over the years artwork has been held in different Darlington Borough Council buildings and moved on occasion. Sometimes work is loaned for exhibition, sometimes displayed in different buildings, including The Town Hall and Darlington Library and sometimes for storage. Sometimes the glass in frames has become cracked, over time the card mounting paper based images can dis-colour and sometimes frames become damaged beyond repair. Not all of the works within the Borough Art Collection are framed, which limits opportunity to display them.

Creative Darlington recently supported services to frame, mount and glaze, reframe, re-glaze or replace the card mounts some of the pictures held in public collections in Darlington. A big thank you to The Art Shop in Darlington for providing fantastic service in reframing, re-glazing and mounting particular works in Darlington Library and Darlington’s Borough Art Collection recently.

A big thank you also to those who have donated artwork to our public collections, and we’re looking forward to renewing exhibitions of particular works from Darlington’s Borough Art Collection within the gallery at Darlington Library, once the restoration work is concluded. Our collections policy regarding donation is that we only consider works either particular to Darlington’s heritage and culture or of considerable artistic value, i.e. artwork by recognised artists with a national or international reputation, as space to safely and securely store work is limited and there are costs attached. A few examples of works donated in recent years which met these criteria are shown below.

Thanks to Darlington Friends exhibition boards were installed within the Friends Community Hub on Skinnergate in Darlington, and thanks to Darlington for Culture and colleagues at Darlington Borough Council, an exhibition there during Darlington Arts Festival shared the work of fantastic artists in this new space during Darlington Arts Festival 2022. Creative Darlington was delighted to support the installation of these exhibition boards, and we look forward to seeing more artwork on display there in future.

Jo Pickering is running workshops for children and adults at The Bridge Centre for Visual Arts this summer and a workshop there for children interested in painting in acrylic this Autumn Half Term.  Jo has taught Art to secondary school students for over 25 years and is currently Head of Art at a Stockton secondary school. Recently Jo was selected to exhibit one of her paintings in the prestigious Mall Galleries in London as part of the ‘Artist of the Year’ exhibition, and Jo was also featured on Sky Arts ‘Landscape Artist of the Year’ in 2017. These are the links to the web pages with details of those:-

10th August 2022 – Kids Watercolour Painting Workshop – Jo Pickering – The Bridge Centre (thebridgedarlington.org.uk)

11th August 2022 – Acrylic Canvas Painting Workshop – Jo Pickering – The Bridge Centre (thebridgedarlington.org.uk)

12th August 2022 – Traditional Portrait Drawing Techniques Workshop – Jo Pickering – The Bridge Centre (thebridgedarlington.org.uk)

24th October 2022 – Kids Acrylic Painting Workshop – Jo Pickering – The Bridge Centre (thebridgedarlington.org.uk)

The Crossing the Tees Book Festival, present a fantastic programme across Tees Valley from 11^th-17^th June 2022, brought to you by Stockton, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Darlington and Redcar & Cleveland Library Services, backed by funders including Creative Darlington.

Darlington’s newly-refurbished Cockerton Library hosts an afternoon of inspiring authors on Wednesday 15^th June, with everything you need to lift your spirits and feed your mind!

In The Women Who Saved the English Countryside, professor of modern history Matthew Kelly traces the story of landscape preservation through the lives of four remarkable women: Octavia Hill, Beatrix Potter, Pauline Dower, and Sylvia Sayer; women who protected the English landscape at a crucial period through a mixture of environmental activism, networking, and sheer determination.

Poet and author Wendy Pratt reads from two award-winning books; her poetry collection When I Think Of My Body As A Horse is a stunning meditation on child loss and motherhood, while The Ghost Lake turns a lyrical eye on the natural history of a lost Yorkshire landscape.

Novelist Stephanie Butland will entertain and encourage us with readings from her many stories of human connection, and from her brilliant memoirs documenting cancer survival and the power of positive healing.

Writers – stay on for a fascinating workshop with Stephanie, who will show us how to turn fictional narrative into a tool for our own inner health.

Continue the week of book-themed goodness with an outing to South Park on Friday 17^th June, joining Professor Dee Heddon in a Walking Library. This free, sociable, outdoor event combines the benefits of a short walk through the park with fascinating open-air readings from a diverse list of eco-literature designed to celebrate the wild in our cities and our souls.

Other events across Teesside that you might enjoy:

Into the Wild Blue Sea – uplifting launch event ft. poetry from Kate Fox and a huge community beach splash!

Bodies in the Library – with three authors from the Northern Crime Writers Syndicate

Mrs Death Misses Death – a sparkling performance of the debut novel from spoken word artist Salena Godden

Festival Finale – a fantastic evening of humourous memoir, from veteran performer & BBC broadcaster Ian McMillan and millennial commentator & comedian Lucy Holden

Julia and Phillip’s sibling relationship encouraged them to create a conversational podcast reminiscing about their childhood and areas of their lives, including schools days in Darlington, where they have longstanding family connections. The podcasts can be heard at https://www.theoddconversation.com/ .

Darlington Arts Festival 2022 saw both back in the borough recently, and we’re happy to share their podcasts here.