Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant brings the star wattage, but Durham Book Festival’s 2026 programme makes a much larger case for northern stories, working-class voices and the increasingly vital act of reading
Run by volunteers and screened in places where films are not usually found, Scalarama Leeds returns this September. First, its programmers are gathering at Hyde Park Picture House for Postcards from the Edge, free popcorn - and the unveiling of this year’s gloriously unpredictable programme
Kate Mosse, Prue Leith, Sophie Raworth, Ben Okri and Heather Morris are among the first headliners announced for this autumn’s Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival - bringing stories of ageing, endurance, resistance and renewal to North Yorkshire
A felled oak, a boyhood in Scriven and a bunch of flowers carried home from a garage have found their way into Thomas James Butler’s most personal exhibition. In Harrogate, the Yorkshire artist asks us to look again at the natural world - while there is still time
Short Supply’s first MagNorth feature was about refusing to wait for permission. Now Mollie and Bek are taking one orange chair to Edinburgh - and asking what happens in the fragile moment before an idea enters the world
From Michael Rosen and Len Pennie to political poetry, local voices and the return of The Ballad of Blea Wyke, Say Owt’s autumn season shows what can happen when artists are given a room - and audiences are trusted to listen
From Brian Eno in an airport terminal to Northern Soul in Wigan and music-making with people living with dementia, Manchester Camerata is spending six days showing Greater Manchester what a modern orchestra can be
Ahead of next month’s Yorkshire Proms, conductor Ben Crick explains the significance of Bradford and West Yorkshire on European culture and how the region help build significant connections to the continent during Victorian times
The Royal Exchange has assembled an outstanding cast for Shakespeare’s great family catastrophe, with David Threlfall returning to the theatre after 27 years and Nadine Shah taking on both Goneril and the music
Created in two months, funded from one animator’s pocket and built to travel between grassroots venues, LED ON brings an hour of original animation and independent northern music to Newcastle’s Cumberland Arms. Its modest beginnings conceal a rather audacious idea
A free celebration of Bowie brought world-class performers, homegrown talent and 2,500 people into the Opera House. But behind the standing ovations was a more consequential idea: that culture can help Blackpool reshape its economy, strengthen its communities and determine how the town is seen
More than 60 authors are heading to the Baltic Triangle for a fab summer celebration of books, music, storytelling - and one or two things you probably won’t find at your local library
Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant brings the star wattage, but Durham Book Festival’s 2026 programme makes a much larger case for northern stories, working-class voices and the increasingly vital act of reading
Run by volunteers and screened in places where films are not usually found, Scalarama Leeds returns this September. First, its programmers are gathering at Hyde Park Picture House for Postcards from the Edge, free popcorn - and the unveiling of this year’s gloriously unpredictable programme
Kate Mosse, Prue Leith, Sophie Raworth, Ben Okri and Heather Morris are among the first headliners announced for this autumn’s Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival - bringing stories of ageing, endurance, resistance and renewal to North Yorkshire
A felled oak, a boyhood in Scriven and a bunch of flowers carried home from a garage have found their way into Thomas James Butler’s most personal exhibition. In Harrogate, the Yorkshire artist asks us to look again at the natural world - while there is still time
Short Supply’s first MagNorth feature was about refusing to wait for permission. Now Mollie and Bek are taking one orange chair to Edinburgh - and asking what happens in the fragile moment before an idea enters the world
From Michael Rosen and Len Pennie to political poetry, local voices and the return of The Ballad of Blea Wyke, Say Owt’s autumn season shows what can happen when artists are given a room - and audiences are trusted to listen
From Brian Eno in an airport terminal to Northern Soul in Wigan and music-making with people living with dementia, Manchester Camerata is spending six days showing Greater Manchester what a modern orchestra can be
Ahead of next month’s Yorkshire Proms, conductor Ben Crick explains the significance of Bradford and West Yorkshire on European culture and how the region help build significant connections to the continent during Victorian times
The Royal Exchange has assembled an outstanding cast for Shakespeare’s great family catastrophe, with David Threlfall returning to the theatre after 27 years and Nadine Shah taking on both Goneril and the music
Created in two months, funded from one animator’s pocket and built to travel between grassroots venues, LED ON brings an hour of original animation and independent northern music to Newcastle’s Cumberland Arms. Its modest beginnings conceal a rather audacious idea
A free celebration of Bowie brought world-class performers, homegrown talent and 2,500 people into the Opera House. But behind the standing ovations was a more consequential idea: that culture can help Blackpool reshape its economy, strengthen its communities and determine how the town is seen
More than 60 authors are heading to the Baltic Triangle for a fab summer celebration of books, music, storytelling - and one or two things you probably won’t find at your local library
