22nd September

The Great North Museum officially opened the Frontier Voices Spotlight Exhibition. We had a small but select gathering from Great North Museum and Tyne & Wear Museums and Archives staff who had been involved in the project, plus Dr Frances Macintosh from English Heritage and Dr David  Walsh from Newcastle University. The communications officer, Jonathan Loach took lots of photos and I hope that the Newcastle press will print something about the project in the next few weeks. 

Today we had also hoped to run a Frontier Voices art and English Heritage workshop at the GNM where many of the original artefacts found along Hadrian’s Wall have been accessioned and displayed plus the Frontier Voices Spotlight exhibition and the installation at the GNM - so lots to see and much cross-fertilisation.  English Heritage’s site at Carrawbrugh has a Mithraeum and we thought that this might strike a chord with people from Persia, Iran and Syria. Refugees from Newcastle were originally going to participate but called off at the last minute. A second group from Gateshead were asked to come along but they didn’t make it either at such short notice. Life as a refugee is so uncertain when people are trying to sort out their lives as they are being moved from place to place, so we all understood how difficult it is for them to commit and turn-up in these circumstances. We have set up another workshop for next week and hope that some participants will make this one as it will be third time lucky! Here we are planning to take a bus out into the countryside to see the Wall landscape and visit the Mithraeum, followed by an art workshop at the Sill and a look at the landscape near the Wall.