The way funding is distributed in the UK means there’s no money for community groups to organise their own cultural activities – such as the juvenile jazz bands that used to be common in working class towns across the North East of England. It’s time for change, argues Stephen Pritchard.
I was born and grew up in a town called Jarrow (and in neighbouring Hebburn).
Jarrow was, in the words of the town’s socialist MP at the time of the Jarrow March Ellen Wilkinson, a town that was “murdered”. That was in 1936.
I grew up there in the 1970s and 1980s. The place was devastated. But we still had solidarity. We still had pride. We still had community spirit.
The rasping, chiming sounds and colourful, self-organised sights... Keep reading on Colouring In Culture