I love the BBC TV series Art That Made Us. It’s currently showing on BBC2 and is a co-production with The Open University. The series covers 1500 years and presents an alternative history of the British Isles, told through art, theatre and literature. If you haven’t seen it then catch it on iPlayer.
We make up our own histories all the time, don’t we? I enjoyed weaving a sort of history out of happy times in childhood playing on the ruins of the Friar’s Goose Pumping Engine House on Felling’s shoreline. This old mining building features in my 2019 memoir The Princess of Felling but I also created an adult fairy tale about the the building called The Princess and the Goose.
This kinda sorta history led to The Princess and the Piano, a collaboration with musician Mike Waller. We created a mini-musical about my hometown of Felling and performed it around Tyneside in 2019. You can listen to a couple of the songs by clicking here and scrolling down to The Princes of Felling and The Princess and the Goose.
Where does history end and creativity start? Your guess is as good as mine.
