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Creating connectivity amongst our communities

Sunderland Culture Annual Review 2025-26

Shared cultural and creative experiences have the power to strengthen relationships and creating a greater sense of belonging across Sunderland. We strive to ensure that as many people in the city as possible have opportunities to connect, belong and participate in Sunderland’s cultural life.

Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass

Delivered in partnership with Washington Heritage Partnership through Community Opportunities, We Make Culture, the University of Sunderland, Baseline, and Arts Centre Washington, The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass combined storytelling, music and visual arts to celebrate 60 years of Washington New Town.

With a strong collaboration across the city’s cultural and academic sectors, the award-winning project’s imaginative approach demonstrated how cross-artform practice can deepen engagement and amplify local voices.

The project gathered stories from residents to create a series of new radio ballads that reflected the lived experiences, memories, and identities of Washington’s communities. Presented as part of the anniversary celebrations of Washington New Town, it offered a timely opportunity to reflect on the town’s past while engaging new audiences in its evolving story.

Beyond the funded project the podcasters continue to meet at Arts Centre Washington as The Crocodile Collective. Led by local CIC NE Voice the group are continuing to create podcasts about local heritage and issues.

Two musicians perform on a dimly lit stage illuminated by blue spotlighting. Each musician sits at a table equipped with instruments and music equipment, one playing a keyboard on the left and the other playing an acoustic guitar on the right. Behind them, a large screen projects a blue-toned collage of urban buildings, roads, and street signs above the performance space.

The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass Concert
at Arts Centre Washington. Photography by Von Fox.

Our Freedom

This Year Arts Centre Washington took part in Our Freedom – a national project led by Future Arts Centres and Poet Laureate Simon Armitage to mark the anniversary of VE /VJ day.

Arts Centre Washington developed and staged a cross-artform, intergenerational performance that explored personal and collective interpretations of freedom through music, spoken word, movement, and film. The performance ‘Unbound: Our Freedom Cabaret’ included members of ACW groups: Washington Youth Theatre, Right Track Young Musicians Collective, Washington Young Film Makers and The Crocodile Collective Podcasting Group.

Alongside the performance, an open exhibition showcased work responding to the theme of freedom by local artists and ACW’s Creative Age group. A podcast was also produced, capturing voices, reflections, and stories that ensured the work could reach wider audiences beyond the live events.

A stage performance featuring a speaker with bright red hair, glasses, a dark suit, and a bright red tie standing behind a podium draped with a Union Jack flag. They are surrounded by other performers holding cardboard protest signs displaying slogans such as
A large group of performers stands together on a stage facing an audience, bowing and smiling as the crowd silhouettes watch from the foreground. Many performers wear school uniforms with white shirts and ties, while others wear casual, dark, or brightly coloured clothing. On the wall behind the group, projected text outlined in blue neon-style font reads

Our Freedom: Unbound Cabaret at Arts Centre Washington. Photography by Von Fox.

‘I got to see what freedom is like for other people and how I relate to the same freedoms as them. It was a really good experience, making new friends and connecting with different people.’

Young film maker participant

Autonomy

Our Autonomy programme, aimed to reduce the risk of social isolation for young autistic people by creating regular opportunities to meet, develop friendships and explore shared interests through creativity. Our weekly Special Interests Club has supported social connection and creative confidence. Since the first iteration of the project has come to an end, we have secured the group’s future through a partnership with Sunderland College’s SEND provision, Directions.

By delivering out-of-hours visiting times at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens and film screenings at Arts Centre Washington specifically for young people with SEND, we have increased access to some of the city’s cultural venues. During Bright Lights Youth Arts Festival, we launched the first Highlights exhibition, creating a new platform to celebrate the creativity of young disabled and neurodiverse artists, increasing representation, visibility and a sense of belonging within Sunderland’s cultural community.

An exhibition wall displays framed photographs, drawings, and an information panel against white walls adorned with colourful geometric sunburst graphics. On the left wall section, smaller framed artwork hangs alongside a grid of nine vertical portrait photographs. To the right, a larger framed group photo is mounted inside a large purple and olive-green circular graphic motif next to a blue text panel titled

Going Places

Going Places is a touring exhibition and engagement programme led by Art Fund and supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Julia Rausing Trust, with additional support from a group of trusts, foundations and individuals.

Sunderland Culture is part of the Green Spaces, Shared Places network; one of six UK-wide network partnerships, comprising 20 museums, galleries and heritage sites across the UK. The aim of the network is to co-create touring exhibitions with young people aged 13 – 30 years. For the first exhibition young people from the Celebrate Different Collective and the Conservation Rangers at Durham Wildlife Trust worked with Sunderland Culture staff, freelancers, artists and community groups to explore the impacts of land use change, biodiversity loss, rewilding and climate change in green spaces.

The young people have taken part in oral history and ecolens training, selected Museum objects, interviewed community participants, contributed interpretation and design ideas and made decisions about the exhibition plans.

A group of visitors gathers along an outdoor nature path while a guide on the right gestures towards tree leaves and talks to them. The guide wears a dark blue polo shirt and carries a rucksack. Members of the group look on attentively, with a person in the lower foreground holding open a spiral-bound notebook to sketch or take notes. Dense green bushes and trees surround the group under a bright, overcast sky.

Sunderland Culture Annual Review 2025-26