Post by Rob Hopkins

I’m just home from an incredible 5 day ‘York & North East Imagination Tour’ taking in, in order, York, Middlesborough, Hartlepool, Durham and Newcastle. It was kindly supported and catalysed by Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and made possible by the brilliant tour producer Frances Arnold. Deepest thanks to my other colleagues on the tour: the delightful filmmaker Carl Joyce of Coal Field Studios who was documenting the tour and who, with Frances, was incredibly good company, and Matt Golding of ‘Screw This, Let’s Try Something Else’ podcast who joined us for some of the dates. Deepest thanks also to Sophia Cheng, Katie Frost, Sophia Parker, Victoria Hughes, Kate كاترين McLaven and the rest of the crew at JRF and Fay Andrews-Hodgson of Poesis in York, Shahda K. of the Re:Power Collective in Middlesborough, Emma Wheetman and Rachel Laycock of BloomInArt, and Adam Cooper at Threads in the Ground in Hartlepool, Aaron Bowman Jess Hall and the rest of the crew at No More Nowt at Redhills in Durham and Carlo Viglianisi and Dan Russell and the rest of the crew at Building Culture CIC in Newcastle. And to the people I've no doubt forgotten to name here, and of course everyone who came on the training days. What a trip. I’m kind of blown away by the whole thing. And so beautiful to finish the whole thing in Newcastle with such a beautiful day of ‘Tyne Travel’ (thanks to Ben Jones of Dingy Butterflies CIC for that particularly beautiful pun). Frances and I will be writing an article with more detailed reflections and observations on the tour, but we’ll wait for the dust to settle and get a bit of rest first! In the meantime here are a few assorted photos from the 5 events with tanks to Amelia Reed for the Durham ones.