Month: July 2025

SURVING IN THE ARTS in conversation with North East actor Jamie Brown

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Jamie in ‘Hadaway Harry’. Photo credit Von Fox Promotions

Meeting up with contributors I’ve asked the usual questions of who, where, what, why and when. For a band you might not listen to their music, but we still want to know if they were signed? What venues did they play? Did they release any records? And yes, some did appear on Top of the Pops and the legendary live music show The Tube broadcast from Newcastle.

However, occasionally I throw in a question that is relevant for working class people in a creative business. How many times do you hear working class voices on stage or TV?

Wisecrack Productions, a North East based theatre company, have produced a number of plays documenting working class history – helping in their own little way. Earlier this year I met up with actor Jamie Brown who has starred in some of the plays and asked him – how do you survive in the arts?

I work with two theatre companies. I’m company director for Theatre Space North East based in Sunderland. It’s about cultivating creativity within the community. We do theatre tours and plays in the parks through summer seasons.

Also work with 1623 Theatre Company. 1623 was the year the Shakespeare plays were published. The work centres around taking inspiration from Shakespeare and people’s everyday lives and making new work from it.

When I came back to the North East as a professional actor I was cast in The Machine Gunners at The Customs House, South Shields with an actor called Donald McBride who was a few decades my senior. He said with a twinkle in his eye and a wink ”You’ll be around a long time you will, just keep your head down and be nae botha”.

There is something in just doing your job, doing it well and knowing your role within that room. As a younger actor there is a lot to be said for that.

As I’ve plied my trade in the area for the best part of 20 years one of the things I tell students when I go to do talks at project days is there are two types of people in the world. There are those that plant seeds and there are those that just go around picking flowers.

There are two types of actor, some pick flowers while others like to get their hands dirty and plant seeds. I think you need to be doing both. But you’ve got no insurance that anything is gonna grow if you’re not the person starting it off. So, you’ve got to rely on yourself to put things in place and bring things to life.

There are some actors who want to travel the country or travel the world but for me it was about having a sense of place, a sense of community, bringing stories to life about that place, for the people from that place.

There’s a lot to be said about shared experience and shared history and values you have around you. Also, you can’t just wait for people to knock on your door, you’ve got to be doing stuff in the meantime.

There is or was a perception that when I came out of drama school someone would put out a casting call, you’d apply, go for an audition but it wouldn’t always happen. There’s a lot of in house casting, a lot of casting people who they know because it’s a high risk business and they want to take as few as risks as possible. They would prefer employing people who they can work with and who will do a good job. As a young up and coming artist sometimes that’s not you because you haven’t had the opportunity to work.

Being on the other side of the table I completely understand it but as a young actor seeing the same people get cast in the same sort of things it is frustrating and you think if that was only my chance. But don’t give up, chances do come and you’ve got to be ready to take them and not kicking up a fuss or overstepping your role.

An actor who has a creative brain has aspirations to direct, but are you the right director in that room and in that moment? Overstepping can be a bit fractious as well. You have to know your role within the room and its boundaries.

You might want to be an established theatre director in the future but if you are being employed as an actor by all means contribute your ideas when it is appropriate or when they are asked for, they are welcomed, but if you overstep you are going to realise very quickly you are not somebody who understands that particular hat you need to wear in that room. It can rub people up the wrong way.

What projects have I been working on? Well last year we done As You Like It outside Durham Cathedral on the green then St Peters Church, Sunderland and the Anglo Saxon farm at Bede’s World in Jarrow. This year we are planning more inside and out doors shows at places relevant to the story we are doing. We’re really excited about it.

Alikivi   2025

Link to previous posts >>> HADAWAY HARRY – in conversation with actor Jamie Brown | ALIKIVI : NORTH EAST UK CULTURE

SOUL MAN – in conversation with North East actor Jamie Brown | ALIKIVI : NORTH EAST UK CULTURE

ART FOR ART’S SAKE in conversation with animator Sheila Graber

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Meeting up with contributors to this site I’ve asked how they survive in the arts. Some talk of persistence and others simply being obsessed by it. I think to give yourself a good chance you’ve got to be prepared to work on it day in day out basically 24/7/365 days a year.

85 year old Sheila featured on this site in June 2018 where she talked about spending her life in art – so she was the perfect person to ask.

Surviving in the arts is for me going with the flow. I believe in my Mam’s saying ‘Every day in every way in everyday I’m getting better and better’ particularly when you are feeling crap or when things have gone wrong. In the arts you need this saying because there are times when things just don’t happen for you. Tempered with that my Dad used to say ‘worse things happen at sea’! So never, never, give up. Keep positive and keep going.

After attending Art College Sheila then went to Birmingham School for Training Art Teachers in 1961.

That was the best thing to happen to me. I was shown that everyone is an artist in their own way and it’s your job as an art teacher to bring it out. It’s about giving something positive to people in their lives.

I first taught art in comprehensive schools in South Shields and by 1970 I was divorced and had time to play so bought a super 8 cine camera. Play is very important plus having a messy room or studio where no one tidies up after you!

My first messy place was at home in South Shields working at a desk looking out onto our little garden. Later it was a studio in the Pilot Office overlooking the river Tyne. Then by the mid 70s I got a break in animation.

I was contacted by an agent for World TV who sold the short films I made globally. She later commissioned me to animate 10×10 minute ‘Just So Stories’. The actual process of animation can take a long time to produce minutes on video so the only way I could produce this was to give up teaching – which I did in 1980.

Sheila animating Frame by Frame for World TV and her Mam crocheting for a local shop – a true cottage industry.

Sheila also works with various charities, the last post features Anna Malia and North East Animal Rights, how did you get involved with them?

When I lived in Ireland I saw an incident, not to go into it here too much as it’s really upsetting, but there was a field of cows and a calf that broke free from the herd. It was about how it was dealt with by the farmer that really affected me. I thought if I get the chance I would do something for you – for that calf.

I heard a song by North East musician Jen Stevens, loved it, and thought that would really work with images. I asked Jen if I could use it and she said yes. We put it out and Anna Malia from North East Animal Rights got in touch and we took it from there.

Link to Jen Stevens song & video >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMDkdZ3TaEk

Sheila is currently working on a book about George McVay, a little known artist who lived from 1902-1967. Former Shields Gazette journalist Janis Blower is in the process of editing it.

George was a very good photographer which accounts for the very large detail in his pictures. His style of painting was very photographic. When I was 8 my mam bought a set of his prints that the Gazette had commissioned and I loved looking at them like kids look at ipads now. For a long time I done plasticene models of them.

All his life he drew some amazing illustrations of Shields and surrounding areas. Some people may recognise his black and white drawings, very clear, very precise everything from the old Town Hall to the piers, the river and the Groyne. In the book Janis Blower will be adding underneath a description and history of George’s picture.

In his early days I gather he worked at Readhead Shipyard, he was studying planning, design and engineering. His Dad was mayors secretary at South Shields Town Hall and was a good photographer. It’s thought he said to his son that he should work in the Town Hall and he eventually did, he was employed in the ratings department.

Out of the goodness of his heart he’s done drawings for presentations at the town hall. There are some amazing manuscripts, whatever was required he could do it even when people leave. He also done commissions for the Shields Gazette.

The Shields museum have some in their store. He has stuff in the Hancock and Discovery museum, Newcastle. He did a showing at the Laing Art Gallery and down in London but all track of that is lost. Unfortunately, nobody has given him the recognition that he deserves.

What I’ve found over the years is that he and I have followed parallel tracks. We have both done a lot of work for charity and both drawn the most popular buildings and views in Shields because we love the place.

To contact Sheila check out her official site at >>>

Products — SHEILA GRABER ART

Alikivi  July 2025