Accessible, Ingenius and Excellent
Sign Language Duel, Festival of Ingenuity, Darlington.
Creative Darlington is committed to creating the conditions where an accessible, distinctive, and excellent cultural offer can thrive in Darlington, and be enjoyed by residents, visitors, and people working here. We support public events, exhibitions and festivals, alongside targeted programmes of activity.
A Light That Never Fades
In 2024/25 Creative Darlington supported Broken Scar Productions postproduction and screening of a short film exploring Arthur Wharton’s later life entitled “A Light That Never Fades”, which was screened to an enthusiastic audience, including people who had travelled from Manchester for the occasion, at The Forum Music Studios on Wednesday 22nd January 2025. Arthur Wharton was born in Ghana in 1865 and moved to Darlington in 1883, and had an amazing sporting career in England, excelling as a springer and becoming the world’s first black professional footballer. Alongside the screening, Creative Darlington also supported a live programme of activity. The films cast included Derek Griffiths in the role of Arthur Wharton.
Mike Tweddle from Broken Scar Productions worked with Ishy Dinn as a script consultant on this venture. Broken Scar Productions and the Arthur Wharton Foundation attended a Trailblazers awards night run by the Black Footballers Partnership at the Houses of Parliament in October 2024 to introduce the film, which is of a length to sit within the short film category within film festivals. The film was commissioned by the Arthur Wharton Foundation, with support from the National Heritage Lottery Fund, and is expected to be used where possible within the Foundation’s ongoing work with young people of secondary school age and above.
Opening the Closet Door
Creative Darlington commissioned Helix Arts to promote a Flourish programme in Darlington in 2021/22, which supported artists in developing projects that engaged communities in Darlington. Sarah Li participated in the Flourish programme, and secured Arts Council England Project Funding for ‘Opening the Closet Doors’ project with Creative Darlington budget support. This art and film project involved LGBTQ+ adults and referenced the archives of Darlington Hippodrome and included a film screening there.
Conversations in Painting
Conversations in Painting: ‘if it fits in the Fiesta you’re in…’ presented an exhibition of new and recent paintings at Crown Street Art Gallery, Darlington – Saturday 14th October until Thursday 9th November 2017 – showing work made by a group of practitioners distinctly placed in their personal trajectory who sustain a direct connection with the Tees Valley. A collaboration of emerging, established, national and international artists whose collective expertise represents a diverse range of interpretive approaches. Artists commissioned to make work for this show were Sarah Cooney, Deb Covell, Gordon Dalton, Philip Gatenby, Remy Neumann and Alicia Paz. The Conversations in Painting project sought to understand more about how visual arts culture operates in the Tees Valley, especially so through its focus on painting.
Conversations in Painting… Exhibition Preview, Crown Street Art Gallery. Photo Credit : Julian Lister
Conversations in Painting… Exhibition Preview, Crown Street Art Gallery. Photo Credit : Julian Lister
Panel Scenario 01: Painting: politics, practice and pedagogy
Crown Street Art Gallery, Darlington, Thursday 2 November 2017, 6.00 – 8.00 pm
Panel speakers: Kerry Harker (Chair and Independent Curator), Stephen Snoddy (Director, The New Art Gallery Walsall), Tony Charles (Artist and Director, Platform A Gallery, Middlesbrough), Alicia Paz (Artist) and Gordon Dalton (Artist).
Taking place within the setting of the group exhibition Conversations in painting: if it fits in the Fiesta, you’re in… the panel will consider artistic strategies of autonomy and collectivism, and their relationship to notions of radical pedagogy and to painting as a practice within the specific context of the Tees Valley.
Conversations in Painting… is an artist led project initiated by Sarah Cooney and Philip Gatenby in partnership with the independent curator Kerry Harker, a co-curated selective review of non-representational approaches to fine art practice. The exhibition is set in the conventions of the white box gallery as a ‘performance space’ for shared conversational dialogue between participant artists and the public. Public events and workshops scheduled throughout the duration of the gallery show will host visitors, guest practitioners, curators, writers, students and invested members of the public as co-participants in panel discussions and seminar groups including the opportunity to participate in artist led painting workshops.
Further information about the project can be found on the project website www.conversationsinpainting.co.uk
