Hengameh Emami, project worker with the Islamic Heritage Project, will introduce the work of the project in collecting life stories from Muslim people living in the North East.  Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project will gather testimonies from people about their childhood, work, lifestyle, education, family, traditions and culture.  The results will be lodged with the Tyne and Wear Archives for the social and educational benefit of the whole community.

There are also opportunities for people to become involved with the project as volunteers and be trained in how to undertake oral history alongside professional historians.

The project is managed by the Pakistan Cultural society, one of the leading ethnic arts voluntary organisations in the North East, and the Hidden History event has been organised by the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA).

Nigel Todd, WEA North East Regional Director, said:  ’Black History Month has been celebrated across the UK every October for over 30 years, each year growing from strength to strength.  Black History Month is a time for highlighting and celebrating the achievements of the black community and uncover hidden history.

This event will introduce some of the ‘hidden’ history and explore ways in which the histories of Black and Asian people can be recorded and made more well known.’

This free event takes place on Thursday, 29 October 2009 at Nuns Moor Children’s Centre, Studley Terrace, Arthur’s Hill, Newcastle, 7.30-9.00 pm
All welcome.  For more details contact WEA on northeast@wea.org.uk or 0191 212 6100

The Northern Ireland Peace Process

7 pm, Thursday 5^th November 2009

The implementation of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement began just over 10 years ago. Progress has stuttered at times, but the agreement, back in the news again today, is still holding good.

 We are honoured to present

Pat Sheehan,

Former IRA hunger striker and now leading ambassador for the Agreement,

to speak

                      All welcome

 Venue:   St.Leonard’s Catholic School North End,

              Durham. DH1 4NG

                             (opposite side of roundabout from Durham County Hall)

The Society for the Study of Labour History and the Labour and Society Research Group of Newcastle and Northumbria Universities

Labour History Seminar

Saturday, 28 November 2009, 11.00-1.00pm

Northumbria University, Room 232, Lipman Building, Sandyford Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Speakers:

Peter Kirby (University of Manchester)

‘St Monday and the Miners, 1775–1884’

Keith Shaw and John Griffiths (Northumbria University)

‘De-Mystifying T. Dan Smith’

Admission is free and open to the public. Coffee will be provided.

This will be followed by the Society’s AGM, 1.00-2.00pm which is open to all members of the SSLH

This morning, September 24^th I made a visit to the Shipley Gallery to see the exhibition, Building Bridges which is part of the Reinventing the City programme (www.reinventingthecity.org.uk). The T & W Museums have assembled a remarkable collection of art works featuring the bridges which have crossed the Tyne at least since the Roman period. The exhibition is open till the 12 October and is highly recommended.

There is only one feature which falls short of one’s hopes and the curators can only be held marginally responsible. The viewer can only see fragmentary evidence of the real bridge builders – the armies of working men who laboured to builds the dozen bridges which have crossed the river east of Newburn. It will be argued that the gallery can only display what exists in the collection and in fact only a small number of items show the bridges under construction. This is a fair point. However it would have been good to see recognition, in perhaps a panel, of the labourers who undertook the manual tasks. There are a few examples in the pictures. A series of four photographs by an unknown photographer shows men at work, Jimmy Forsyth shows some construction workers in his photos of the building of the Scotswood Bridge, Muncaster’s painting of the Gateshead side during the construction of the High Level shows a squad of labourers digging foundations and finally there are some film clips from the twenties showing ill clad workers performing many deeply unsafe tasks.

There is clearly a need for research in this area. The most detailed book on bridge building, The High Level Bridge and Newcastle Central Station: 150 Years Across the Tyne by John Addyman, though excellent and well researched in many respects pays virtually no attention to the labour issue. It’s as if the bridge just materialised out of Robert Stephenson’s brilliant mind! The issue calls for research. It will be almost certainly true that the evidence will be sparse but it will exist. Half an hour in Gateshead Local Studies Library after the gallery visit brought a few items to light. First there are at least a dozen catalogue cards containing references to bridge building. Among them is a report of a strike amongst workers on the High Level. Then in a 1907-8 vulume of the proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers is an article on the King Edward Bridge which includes detailed remarks about workers’ conditions and safety. It seems to me that that there is a viable research project here. In a future piece I will try to map out how it might be undertaken.

English Journey – a free lecture

Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne

Tuesday 27 October, 6 – 7.30pm

 JB Priestley’s classic book English Journey will be the subject of a free lecture at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum.

The event will be hosted by Professor John Tomaney of Newcastle University, who will discuss how the North East chapters of the book relate to Tyneside today. Guest speakers will include the author’s son, Tom Priestley.

Graham Bradshaw, curator of Discovery Museum, says:

“English Journey describes the author’s travels throughout England and, at the time of its publication in 1934, it was an instant best-seller. It was hailed not only for its descriptions of both the beauty and poverty which Priestly encountered on his travels, but also for its honest depiction of a country in the grip of an economic recession.”

 The book celebrates its 75^th anniversary this year and has been re-issued as a special 75^th anniversary edition, which for the first time has been restored to its full length.

Contributors to the 75^th anniversary edition include Jarrow-born playwright Alan Plater and novelist Dame Beryl Bainbridge.

 The event at Discovery Museum will focus on the North East chapters of the book, during which the author visits Newcastle, Gateshead, North Shields, South Shields, Jarrow, Durham and Sunderland. Professor Tomaney, who is part of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University, will explore the author’s experiences in a historical context and will also discuss how they compare the with the same regions today.

 The lecture is free but places will need to be booked in advance by calling Janette Murphy on (0191) 277 2307 or by emailing  janette.murphy@twmuseums.org.uk

 For more information on English Journey visit the website at www.greatnorthernbooks.co.uk.