A monumental new artwork has transformed an overlooked Newcastle wall. But behind it, something much more significant is taking shape: a new creative campus offering North East talent another route into music, performance, film and television - and another reason not to leave the region to begin

When MagNorth joined the launch of Culture Start, Sunderland made a bold promise: children deserved opportunity by design, not accident. Fourteen-year-old Belle Collier - and the £500 bursary that helped her family meet the price of participation - shows us what that promise means in practice

Northern Auntie has had enough of your Bluetooth speakers, speakerphone conversations and outdoor screenings of Mamma Mia! Nobody else consented to join in

Record grades and record university acceptances headline A-level results day. Beneath them sits England’s widest regional attainment gap - and a financially strained university sector hungry for domestic students. For northern families, “you can still get a place” is not the same as “this is the right place for you”

A permanent seafront mural will honour the photographer whose Last Resort pictures changed how Britain saw New Brighton. But the town’s proposed tribute goes beyond one wall—inviting children and residents to decide how its next portrait should look

Given a few hours to wander before Choral Evensong, MagNorth found a city being photographed, performed and quietly shared - from Chicken Parmos and ghost walks to a floating bar, an indignant Italian gent and the stillness of the Minster

After a decade of extraordinary victories, brutal injuries and unforgiving public scrutiny, Molly McCann could have chosen a quieter life. Instead, the Liverpool fighter is beginning again - carrying with her a childhood shaped by uncertainty, a city that taught her not to give in, and a determination to make the road wider for those coming behind

A free platform connecting artists with affordable, properly registered studios is expanding beyond London into Yorkshire and the North of England

Flowers are set to fill two Kelham Island venues this month for a joyful new city festival - helping Bloom Sheffield continue providing free therapeutic gardening sessions for women who need support

That pebble fits perfectly in the palm. The shell would look lovely on a bathroom shelf. But on coastlines already being remade by tides, storms and millions of summer visitors, when does a harmless souvenir become something we should leave behind?

On a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust walk at Spurn, MagNorth explores erosion, wildlife, military history and the power of helping young people connect with conservation

A Yorkshire Dales charity has helped build a national recycling network for redundant tree shelters. But with millions of plastic guards still scattered across Britain’s woodlands, campaigners say their eventual removal must be planned - and paid for - before the first tree goes into the ground

At Yeavering, one of early medieval Britain’s most important royal centres has almost vanished back into the Northumberland landscape. This summer, archaeology, storytelling, food and communal celebration will bring it vividly into view again

The curlew’s cry remains one of the defining sounds of the Yorkshire uplands. Keeping it there will require communities, conservationists and farmers to begin working together long before next year’s mowing starts

Former Green Futures participant Willow Driscoll-Duke returns as a filmmaker with a documentary about nature, belonging and young people’s environmental hopes

Eight young people are being offered the chance to earn, learn and begin a career caring for some of the North’s most important landscapes.

Part doll’s house, part art-school fever dream and part institutional hall of mirrors, David Steans’ new exhibition at Leeds Arts University uses paper, collage and architectural models to explore how creative worlds - and the places governing them - are constructed

Linocuts, collagraphs, monoprints and wood engravings will fill the Chapel and Harriet Room at York Cemetery when York Printmakers return for their annual fair - a free weekend celebrating original art, handmade processes and the people behind the press

Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant brings the star wattage, but Durham Book Festival’s 2026 programme makes a much larger case for northern stories, working-class voices and the increasingly vital act of reading

Run by volunteers and screened in places where films are not usually found, Scalarama Leeds returns this September. First, its programmers are gathering at Hyde Park Picture House for Postcards from the Edge, free popcorn - and the unveiling of this year’s gloriously unpredictable programme

Kate Mosse, Prue Leith, Sophie Raworth, Ben Okri and Heather Morris are among the first headliners announced for this autumn’s Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival - bringing stories of ageing, endurance, resistance and renewal to North Yorkshire

A felled oak, a boyhood in Scriven and a bunch of flowers carried home from a garage have found their way into Thomas James Butler’s most personal exhibition. In Harrogate, the Yorkshire artist asks us to look again at the natural world - while there is still time

Short Supply’s first MagNorth feature was about refusing to wait for permission. Now Mollie and Bek are taking one orange chair to Edinburgh - and asking what happens in the fragile moment before an idea enters the world

From Michael Rosen and Len Pennie to political poetry, local voices and the return of The Ballad of Blea Wyke, Say Owt’s autumn season shows what can happen when artists are given a room - and audiences are trusted to listen