With the cost of a night out at an all-time high, Dr Bethany Usher suggests the resurgence of a historic British popular past time – walking the city at night. It is a warm midsummer evening and we have an unexpected offer to babysit. A year ago, we may h…

War has rarely felt so up-close and personal as it does today. Footage of crumbling buildings and horizons being lit up by rocket fire has escaped the evening news and become unremarkable features of our social media feeds as they sit alongside nondescrip…

Claudia Rankine is the author of the acclaimed trilogy on race and whiteness in the US – Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Citizen and Just Us. Her play The White Card, written before the world turned upside down in 2020, has it’s European premiere at Northern …

We have all watched the press attack. Suddenly an individual’s visibility noticeably increases as they are humiliated, vilified and cast out from “respectable” society. Willingly or unwittingly, we may have joined in by clicking on content, co…

Louisa Rogers imerses herself in a world where teens dress up as hoofed ruminant mammals and glittery pirates. Your TikTok ‘For You Page’ is a stream of consciousness tailored to you. Every iteration is different, and every time you open up the applicatio…

Gareth Longstaff explores the paradigms of class, region, and hope in Sam Fender’s music. In November 2021 Sam Fender played an awe-inspiring, tenacious, and unswerving set to over 10,000 fans at the Utilita Arena in Newcastle. This was a decisive moment.…

When I wrote a blog post about the future of Newcastle city centre, I wasn’t quite anticipating the response I received. Some even reached out to help me with my own dilemma - offering to show me premises as quickly as later that day in case they could ac…

What’s your favourite queer book? The book lovers among us will know what it’s like to see ourselves in what we read; a lot of us may even remember the first time we found a character in a book who shared our identity, and how that validation felt. Howeve…