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There are moments when I think the North East feels especially alive to itself - when history, movement and the present tense briefly line up, and you sense that something more than an 'event' is taking place.
In March, one of those moments arrives in the form of The Hope Brigade: a travelling photography exhibition created by WOW – Women of the World, in partnership with S&DR200 - the bicentenary programme marking the first journey on the Stockton & Darlington Railway.
At its heart are 26 portraits - one for each mile of that original railway line - profiling women, girls and non-binary people whose work, care, creativity and activism are reshaping life across the region today. They are photographed by Joanne Coates, an award-winning photographer and documentary visual artist based in the North East, whose work explores rurality, class, identity and hidden histories.
The exhibition launches on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2026, with a special event at Middlesbrough Theatre (details and tickets HERE) before travelling throughout the North East across March - to Shildon, Newcastle, Darlington and other locations yet to be announced.
This is not about 'heroes' in the abstract. It’s about proximity. Recognition. About looking again at the people who quietly hold things together.
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The Stockton & Darlington Railway is often framed as a story of engineering firsts - iron, steam, speed. But its deeper legacy is about connection: how movement reshaped work, towns, landscapes and possibility.
The S&DR200 festival has spent the last year widening that story - uncovering untold histories, foregrounding communities, commissioning new art, and asking how the past continues to move through the present. The Hope Brigade North East sits squarely within that spirit: not as nostalgia, but as legacy.
Instead of locomotives, it maps people.
Instead of cargo, it carries stories.
Each portrait marks a point along the line - a reminder that progress has always been social as well as technological.
WOW – Women of the World began in 2010, founded by Jude Kelly CBE as a festival at the Southbank Centre in London to celebrate women and girls while also asking difficult, structural questions about power, visibility and equity. Over fifteen years it has grown into a truly global movement, reaching millions of people across six continents.
The project’s power has never been about celebrity alone - though figures from Malala Yousafzai to Baroness Doreen Lawrence have taken part - but in placing globally recognised voices alongside women and girls without public platforms: those doing the slow, daily work of change in their own communities.
In autumn 2025, WOW came to the North East for the first time as WOW North East as part of the S&DR200 celebrations. The response was immediate and electric. The Hope Brigade North East grows directly out of that moment.
As Colette Bailey, WOW’s CEO, says, the 26 people featured here are “just the tip of the iceberg” of those driving progress across the region.
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The individuals selected through an open nominations process reflect the breadth of forces shaping gender equity in the North East today. They include:
And others, with further names still to be announced.
Taken together, the portraits form a map of the region not as an economy or a statistic, but as a living, relational place.
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The exhibition’s launch will be marked by WOW North East: International Women’s Day Celebration at Middlesbrough Theatre, hosted by Jude Kelly. The afternoon will feature conversations with contributors including Teissy Easton, Jordan Groody and Kate Fox — local stories, reflection and hard-won optimism.
Tickets are on sale now, with more guests to be announced soon.
WOW’s work is underpinned by a simple but radical belief: that a gender-equal world is possible - and that people act when they see themselves reflected in stories of change.
Beyond the data and beyond the festivals themselves, there’s something quieter happening here - especially in the North East. A sense of continuity. Of the line extending forward.
The railway once reconfigured how this region moved. Projects like The Hope Brigade ask how we might move together now.
