Behind one door, a painter is trying to capture light on the River Tweed. Elsewhere, seaweed gathered from the Northumberland coast is being pressed into botanical art. Handmade paper is emerging from discarded materials; jewellery is being assembled from sea glass and recycled silver; local plants are becoming inks and pigments.
For two weekends, Berwick-upon-Tweed is making its creative life visible.
The first Berwick Open Studios will bring together more than 60 artists and makers across 25 venues in Berwick, Tweedmouth and Spittal. Studios, homes, galleries, workshops, shops and temporary spaces will open to the public on 26 and 27 September and again on 3 and 4 October.
The numbers are impressive for an inaugural event. But its real value could lie in revealing a cultural community that already exists - often behind closed doors, in borrowed rooms, converted buildings, upstairs spaces and domestic studios.
This is less an exhibition than a town-wide act of introduction.
Illustrator Ali Edwards will welcome visitors into her home studio at Glamis Hill, where maps, sketchbooks, commission roughs and original drawings will reveal the process behind her depictions of the North East’s landscapes and built heritage.
“Living in Berwick is just a treasure trove of heritage buildings and landmarks that I find endlessly interesting and inspiring,” she says.
At Barracks Artist Studios, visitors will encounter work ranging from painting and printmaking to sculpture, performance and ecology.
Foraging artist and ink-maker Jo Thomas works with wild plants gathered through the seasons. Julia Sweryda presses locally foraged seaweed and uses coastal material to create paintings and cyanotypes. Joel Arnstein’s abstract work draws upon the tidal river, using the intervals between prime numbers to establish its rhythmic structures.
The range of disciplines is impressive. Open Studios is not presenting a single idea of what a Berwick artist looks like. Its participants include established practitioners, recent arrivals, retired people returning to an earlier creative life, artists developing environmentally engaged work and makers sustaining traditions of textiles, ceramics, basketry and print.
Some operate from recognised cultural buildings. Others work from sheds, homes, shops or outdoor locations around the town.
For visitors, that opens a different kind of encounter. Finished pieces will be available to buy, but so will sketchbooks, tools, materials, experiments and the evidence of abandoned or unresolved ideas. The public is being invited to see how work is made, rather than encountering art only after the process has been concealed.
At Jackal on Hide Hill, artist and curator Mills Jackson Rowe will show work spanning painting, collage, print and mixed media.
Her practice examines how power and control are expressed through class, politics, family histories and cultural symbols. She sees Open Studios as an opportunity to strengthen connections as well as display finished art.
“Open Studios feels like an opportunity to make Berwick’s creative connections more visible, encourage conversations and hopefully make art feel more accessible and welcoming to people who might not usually step into gallery spaces,” she says.
That accessibility is central to the project.
The trail includes familiar galleries, but also more informal and unexpected spaces. The Northern Soul Kitchen will provide an upstairs pop-up gallery; the Quayside Artisan Huts will house painters, ceramicists and jewellery makers; homes on Palace Green and in Tweedmouth will open their doors.
At Tidekettle Paper on Bridge Street, visitors can discover how commercial and domestic waste is transformed into handmade paper for artists, prints and books. At Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival’s premises, the Burr of Berwick Film Library will present moving-image work through a community archive and exhibition space.
The recently opened Old Brewery Artist Studios in Tweedmouth will also take part. Described as a new creative base for North Northumberland, it will exhibit the work of resident and invited artists alongside the Benchmark Festival of Arts exhibition.
Collectively, the programme begins to show culture not as a discrete attraction but as part of the town’s working fabric.
Berwick Open Studios is a pilot project delivered by Create Berwick, the town’s designated Culture and Creative Zone. Funding comes from Northumberland County Council and the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority.
The policy language surrounding such programmes tends to emphasise sustainable growth, town-centre activity, jobs, skills and the attraction of creative businesses. Those ambitions are important - but Open Studios offers a more immediate test of what the investment means.
Does it help artists find affordable places to work? Can it connect makers with buyers and audiences? Does it allow people who live in the town to participate in its cultural development? Can creative workers build sustainable practices without being priced out by the success they help to generate?
A cultural zone cannot be created simply by designation. It depends upon people having the space, time, confidence and economic opportunity to make things.
Project manager Abigail Thomas says the response from Berwick’s artists has demonstrated the scale of the community already present.
“Berwick is packed full of artists, studios and creative venues,” she says. “It’s a location which inspires through its landscape, heritage and stories, and this can clearly be seen in the art which is made here.
“People want to be involved and they want to help celebrate the creative community we have in the town.”
The first Open Studios will not answer every question about Berwick’s cultural future. What it can do is establish a clearer picture of the people upon whom that future depends.
Visitors following the trail will move between Berwick’s fortifications and domestic streets, across the bridges into Tweedmouth and towards the coast at Spittal.
The route brings together ancient architecture, former industrial premises, independent shops, home studios and contemporary cultural organisations. Berwick itself becomes part of the exhibition: the estuary, sea, stonework, wildlife, weather and border landscape recur throughout the participating artists’ work.
That relationship between place and practice may be Open Studios’ most persuasive argument.
Culture-led regeneration is sometimes described as though culture arrives from elsewhere to revive a town. Berwick’s artists suggest something different. The creativity is already here—in spare rooms and studios, above shops and inside former breweries.
The first task is to open the doors and allow people to see it.
Berwick Open Studios takes place on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September, and Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October 2026.
Most venues are open from 10am until 4pm, although participating dates and opening times vary. Admission is free, with the separate Joan Eardley exhibition at the Granary Gallery remaining ticketed.
A printed trail map will be available from Berwick Visitor Centre and locations around the town. The full list of venues, artists and the downloadable map can be found on the Berwick Open Studios website
Header image: Lucy Baxandall at Tidekettle Paper
