Norman Cornish’s depiction of mining life in north east England captured the working heart of pitmen and their communities. It was an industrial lifestyle and landscape that defined generations and yet within Cornish’s lifetime would transform beyond recognition.

The last North East deep mine closed in 2005, nine years before Cornish’s death in 2014. His paintings remain one of the clearest chronicles of both the economic and social history of the region and of the coal mining industry during the 20^th century.

As broadcaster, Melvyn Bragg explains: “Where is this community which was the engine of the greatest revolution in the world – the Industrial Revolution? These are the men who made the real British Empire in steam and engineering and shipbuilding, and fed it with a vital power of coal. It’s gone. It has been all but wiped from the landscape and we mourn it and are only just beginning to understand how much it needs to be celebrated. The work of Norman Cornish will lead us there.

“He stands as a magnificent Chronicler of one of the most important passages in English history.

“The paintings and drawing he brings to us of the hard-lived lives of a community which defied the odds will be enduring. He has not only preserved a life lived by millions of people in this country and others around the world, he has given it significance and permanence that only a real artist can achieve.”

Cornish’s talent for art seems to have been there from his earliest days. In 1923, on a on a pre-school visit to King Street Primary School, he won first prize (an old halfpenny) for his drawing of a lady’s boot. Despite a serious health set-back when he contracted diphtheria aged 7, Cornish excelled at school, passing the Eleven Plus to gain a place at The Alderman Wraith Grammar School.

At the age of 14, like most of his male contemporaries in Spennymoor, Cornish left education to join the Dean and Chapter Colliery three-miles along the road at Ferryhill. The pit was nicknamed locally as ‘The Butchers Shop’, owing to the number of accidents and there are 177 deaths recorded by Durham Mining Museum. Cornish once said of his first day: “When I signed on the dotted line the official said in his deep voice ‘You’ve just signed your death warrant son.'”

Cornish worked as an underground coal miner for 33-years and as part of Spennymoor Settlement Sketching Club recorded his experiences through art.

During his years in the pit, Cornish’s art work was exhibited both nationally and locally. The National Coal Board bought five of his paintings for their London offices and in 1962 he was commissioned to paint a 30-foot mural typifying life in County Durham for the new County Hall in Durham City, for which he was paid £1000 and given three-months unpaid leave from the colliery.

But despite this recognition it was only when a worsening back complaint forced him to leave mining in 1966 that he changed career to become a full-time professional artist.

Spennymoor at that time was changing rapidly and many of the street scenes that Norman painted are the only record of a time and place that no longer exist. The value of Norman’s work as a social-historical document as well as an artistic body of work was becoming apparent. His significance as a major contemporary artist was reinforced in 1974 when he was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Newcastle University.

Further honours followed with an an honorary Doctorate in Civil Law from the University of Northumbria in 1995, to whom he presented a body of his work for their permanent collection in 1997, and an MBE for his contribution to art in 2008.

After his death, Cornish’s studio was donated to Beamish Museum, whose plans to develop a 1950s town include the re-creation of the Cornish family home from 33 Bishops Close Street, Spennymoor.

This year, 100 years since his birth, Cornish’s family has worked in partnership with curators, academics, artists, biographers, galleries and the community to draw together a centenary celebration of his life and work, with many previously unseen pieces on display in six exhibitions across County Durham throughout 2019.

In his hometown, a new exhibition at the Bob Abley Art Gallery in Spennymoor tells the story of his mural depicting the Durham Miners’ Gala.

The exhibition features a range of preparatory paintings, drawings, sketches and correspondence plotting the artist’s sometimes challenging journey from the commission of the nine-metre mural by Durham County Council to its installation at Durham’s County Hall, Aykley Heads where it remains.

In Bishop Auckland, the Mining Art Gallery, part of The Auckland Project focuses on community identity in Norman Cornish – A Slice of Life. The exhibition is co-curated by residents of Norman’s home-town of Spennymoor, alongside his children John and Ann, all guided by the gallery’s curator Angela Thomas of The Auckland Project.

“We felt it was important to give a voice to the communities Norman lived amongst and took inspiration from,” Angela says.

“We’ve invited them to choose some of their favourite works and think about what they mean to them today, highlighting how Norman’s work continues to resonate with all kinds of people. There has been a hugely positive response to Norman’s work from visitors since the gallery opened in 2017, and we hope the centenary celebrations encourage even more people to come and discover his unique point of view.”

Other highlights in the region include The Norman Cornish Trail in the artist’s hometown of Spennymoor. Here visitors can walk in Cornish’s footsteps guided by a free trail guide or app offering insights into many original locations which inspired his paintings – taking people back to a time when coal was once the life-blood of industry and of the communities who mined it.

The Story of the Durham Miners’ Gala Mural runs throughout the centenary year from 6 April 2019 to the end of February 2020.

Norman Cornish – A Slice of Life opens at the Mining Art Gallery, Bishop Auckland Market Place on 6 April and runs until 5 January 2020.

Norman Cornish – The Portraits. Gala Gallery, Durham 30 June -1 September 2019.

Cornish – A Man of Destiny at The Greenfield Gallery, Greenfield Arts 10 October 2019 – 11 December 2019.

Norman Cornish – The Sketchbooks at Palace Green Library, Durham University 16 November 2019 – 23 February 2020.

Norman Cornish – The Definitive Collection at The Bowes Museum 16 November 2019 to 23 February 2020.

Norman Cornish’s Former Home Beamish Museum, permanent display.

Norman Cornish Revealed at Gallery North, University of Northumbria, 28 November to 20 December 2019.

For more details visit www.normancornish.com

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Fiona Whitelaw’s 2016 play Tinned Goods recently brought some of these stories to the fore, focusing on three generations of women in a mining community, and how the strike not only impacted on them financially and materially, but also on their friendships, families and relationships.

Relationships and the relevance of political decisions to every fabric of life are also at the centre of Maxine Peake’s new play, Queens of the Coal Age.

Set in Lancashire, it’s based on the true story of four women: Anne (Kate Anthony), Dot (Jane Hazlegrove), Lesley (Danielle Henry) and Elaine (Eve Robertson), who occupied Parkside Colliery in Newton-Le-Willows as a 5 day protest for Women Against Pit Closures.

It’s 1993, almost 10 years after the year-long strike of the 1980s. Since then the industry had seen pit closures year-on-year, and as we meet these four friends, Parkside Colliery is next on the list.

John Major is now Prime Minister, although he is never mentioned. Margaret Thatcher is still the enemy figure. As Lesley says, “She’s done for the name Margaret what Hitler did for little moustaches!”

Peake’s script is littered with barbed one-liners, which brings dark humour to an otherwise heavy subject and keeps pace in a largely static and claustrophobic play. For the most part the women are stuck in one dark space and we all know how it’s going to end.

We are told they are ‘ordinary’ women. Yet one is Anne Scargill, wife of Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers.

Peake does well to humanise the face of what is sometimes seen as a caricatured battle between Scargill and Thatcher. But her characters also brush aside comments about his illegal strike as ignorance, when the National Union of Mineworkers failure to hold a national strike ballot was a dividing factor in mining communities and went against what many miners believed was fair and democratic. Having this raised by a manager, portrayed as a comedy character, tells the audience what the playwright thinks they should think. There are points when it feels close to a political soap box, but Peake resists this by bouncing the dialogue quickly between characters.

Director Bryony Shanahan makes sure we never forget the cause for which the women are fighting, with falling coal dust and ghostly groups of miners wandering through the darkness. We are also left in no doubt of the hardship these women experienced both underground and on the outside. As they stand united in the iron cage bringing them back to the surface, voices of the real protestors play over the speakers. “This policeman said to me, ‘You lost.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but we went down fighting. And that matters’.”

Queens of the Coal Age is at The Royal Exchange, Manchester from 28 June – 28 July before transferring to the New Vic theatre in Stoke-on-Trent.

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I missed press night because I was in York for the official launch of my latest book with the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu’s Agape Love Stories. Taking Christmas out and a heavy cold in between the first chance I got to see the show was early January – a month into its Manchester run with one month still to go at the city’s Palace Theatre.

Long theatre runs such as this are great, because they give an audience to spread their enthusiasm by word of mouth with enough time for their friends to still grab tickets while they can.

I for one am pleased that this time the run is lengthy, because it’s a show I’d been looking forward to all year. I saw it many years ago in London’s West End and this is the first time since opening in 2005 that its toured regionally in the UK.

In terms of the story it sticks very closely to the hit film on which it’s based. That’s largely because it shares a writer (Lee Hall) and director (Stephen Daldry) with the film. Bringing in the added talent of Elton John to write the music seems to have lifted this story of a young boy trying to express in the world into another sphere. It was an amazing success as a film but it works even better as a stage musical than on the big screen.

I grew up in a mining village during the 1980s so the historical and political context comes with a lot of emotion for me. That said, even those with no mining connections couldn’t fail to be moved by the power of this feel-good story, played here with such humour and heart.
At the time when the film opened in 2000 I was working as a reporter on the Middlesbrough Gazette. Jamie Bell is a household name now, but then he was a young boy from nearby Billingham, plucked out of obscurity and propelled into the international spotlight. At the time we all wondered how the film-makers could have imagined finding such a talented kid to play the part of Billy.

In Manchester there are four sharing this stage role, aged 11 and 12. I saw Lewis Smallman in the role of Billy, whose all-round talent (dancing, singing and yes – mastering the accent) is stunning for someone any age, nevermind someone so young.

Nine-year-old Elliot Stiff from Sunderland makes a terrific stage debut as one of three boys in the role of Michael, Billy’s cross-dressing young friend. He brings both fun and touching emotion to the part – his dancing duet, Expressing Yourself with Billy being a real show stopper. Although small they both fill the stage with a wonderful presence that has the audience captivated.

In the performance I saw, Amy Rhiannon Worth stepped in as Mrs Wilkinson giving an energetic powerhouse of a performance. Her initial scenes have an air of Miss Hannigan from the musical Annie – in that she gives the impression of being even meaner than rough and ready, boxing tutor, George (Leo Atkin). There’s nothing politically correct in the way she speaks to her young ballet students and pity any poor girl who’s a bit on the podgy side. Soon though her heart shows through as she rides a whole gamut of emotions from frustration, pride, determination, care, love, joy and plenty of laughter.

Martin Walsh plays the part of Billy’s proud, miner father, a widow who is struggling to keep his family together without an income during the year-long strike. He has the perfect mix of gruffness and heart. And for those who need i,t the programme even has a translated list of his favourite phrases.

Even if you don’t come out understanding, howay it’s reet cush, your emotions will tell you what it means. This is a roller-coaster of a show that never lets up. It’ll have you laughing and crying. And like young Billy when he dances, I left flying.

Billy Elliot the UK tour is at the Palace Theatre, Manchester until 28 Jan 2017. For details of tour venues visit  billyelliotthemusical.com

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Tinned goods tells the stories of three generations of women in a mining community, and how the strike not only impacted on them financially and materially, but also on their friendships, families and relationships.  If you have ever questioned the relevance of politics to your life, you need look no further than these women.

The story starts three months into the strike and centres on the fractured friendship between Rachel (Caroline Frewin) and Sue (Fiona Whitelaw, who also wrote the play). Sue’s husband is one of the striking miners while Rachel’s husband has chosen to cross the picket line. He is – to use that emotive word – a scab. And while that means Rachel can continue to buy fresh food in the supermarket, as opposed to the tinned goods hand-outs Sue’s family relies on, she is an outcast to her friends. There is a lot of ‘them and us’, but through the lives of these women we begin to see some of the complexity behind frequently held black and white views.

The story is simply but cleverly staged, with a strong ensemble cast of five each playing a variety of characters. There is a sense of noise, jostling and violence of the picket line and the audience doubles for the crowd as women, whose daily routine was to cook and clean in the home, stand to address crowds at rallies they have organised. Songs between scenes give a sense of unity, both to the structure of the play and to the characters’ plight.

The miners’ strike is a heavy subject which we know doesn’t end well, but in focusing on the women’s stories, Whitelaw brings a new perspective that is both politicising and uplifting. There are echoes to the war years, where women took on roles they otherwise would never have had the opportunity to do. Within the struggle there is empowerment and these women’s voices still have something to say to us today. Finding a common purpose, whatever that may be, helps people to grow and cements relationships in a way that will never be forgotten.

Tinned Goods was at Salford Arts Theatre on 12 March 2016.

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