Our South Shields: Thanks for the Memories



Our South Shields: Thanks for the Memories is a celebration of cultural diversity and an exploration into how arts, creativity and heritage can support the health, wellbeing and identity of older adults. Funded through Historic England’s Everyday Heritage Grants: Celebrating Working Class Histories, the project is a collaboration between Beamish Museum, Balbir Singh Dance Company, and Professor Paul Chazot from Durham University’s Wolfson Research Institute for Health & Wellbeing.


25-26 24-25 23-24
Credits




Throughout the project, we worked across a variety of settings within the unique environment of Beamish, The Living Museum of the North—bringing a wide range of creative sessions and artistic responses to life. From historic terraces and cobbled streets to community halls and indoor galleries, we embraced the living museum’s immersive character, using it as both backdrop and inspiration for our work.

We engaged with audiences through dance, music, movement and conversation—creating responsive, site-specific moments that connected people to place, memory and one another. Our sessions used creativity as a way to reduce stress, build resilience, and explore identity through shared cultural experience.

This work formed part of a wider project delivered by Beamish’s Health & Wellbeing Team, with ourselves and Professor Chazot, to explore new, non-clinical and culturally appropriate approaches to improving health and addressing inequalities in our communities. By embedding artists within the museum and working closely with its staff and visitors, we helped transform familiar spaces into places of connection, care and creativity, bringing vibrancy and new meaning to everyday heritage.

2025 to 2026



Weekend Celebration Event





Beamish Museum Exhibition Print Materials





Cinema Screening







Sangini  Celebration Event





2024 to 2025


Promotional Materials





Bringing Spices to Clover Cottage





ISEMPH Conference






Ocean Road Mela & South Shields Museum





Beamish Museum Open Day (Site Visit)





Beamish Museum Open Day Print Materials





Beamish Museum Open Day





Beamish Taster Sessions






Sangini Group Sessions






2023 to 2024


     

BSDC and Beamish


This collaboration started as a project that delves into the lives of people from South Asia who arrived in South Shields in the 1950s in the north-east of England. Supported by Everyday Heritage, the work promises to be a gentle exploration of hidden histories of local working class people. 


Senses of the past


These  illustrations created as an imagined view of Clover Cottage - part of a replica row of aged miner’s homes from South Shields, set in the 1950s and home to Beamish’s Health and Wellbeing Team. Each room represents a human sense through the use of found objects and acts as a reminder that dementia can blunt a person’s ability to smell, taste, see, hear or feel. 






Visiting Beamish Museum






Introducing Dance into the Museum





Dancers

Devaraj Thimmaiah
Devika Rao
Eliot Smith
Kali Chandrasegaram
Madhura Goodbole
Sanchita Mazumdar
Yuvel Soria

 Musicians

Aniruddha Mukherjee
Jesse Bannister

 Poet and Librettist 

Adam Strickson

 Photographers

Balbir Singh
Gavin Joynt
Minh Nguyen
Morgan Girvin