Middlesbrough has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in the past few weeks, but here’s a thing: this Teesside town has long been a centre for the arts and culture.
It has three art galleries, is home to the Northern College of Art, and stages Middlesbrough Art Week, which has just ended. This year, it’s hosting the Turner Prize (it was Bradford’s turn in 2025).
At the Yorkshire Sculpture International’s invitation to visit the town, as a trustee of Keighley Creative, I continued my journey into the cultural world that has been a real eye opener since I joined the board four year ago, this time to the former Ironopolis on the south bank of the Tees.
My late elder brother lived in Middlesbrough most of his life and I always found its inhabitants warm and friendly. This was confirmed by my visit on Saturday.
As well as a couple of hours spent seeing the Turner Prize finalists’ work in the impressive Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, I was able to walk around the town, camera ready to capture my views of its highlights.
The monster blue latticework of the Transporter Bridge is evident from many vantage points, its gondola now sadly motionless after more than a century of carrying vehicles and foot passengers across the river while maintaining the upper reaches of the Tees navigable. Serious safety concerns for the structure cast doubt on the future of this engineering masterwork.
There are many remnants of the industrial past of Middlesbrough, founded initially on iron working thanks to the proximity of mineral-rich deposits in the Cleveland hills, developing into steel, shipbuilding and chemical industries. Today, most of the marine activity happens a couple of miles downstream at Teesport.
Mostly, my circuit round Middlesbrough in warm October sunshine confirmed that, while the town undoubtedly has its problems, there’s a lot to commend this north-eastern corner of Yorkshire.
