What’s it like to be an artist in a place deemed in need of cultural levelling up? Our writer meets a Nuneaton couple with big hub dreams, finds a DIY ethos alive in Chatham and has a Blade Runner moment with a painter from Stockton-on-Tees
THIS week’s object is actually a whole room full of objects related to the steel industry. The recreated works locker room will have been very familiar to thousands across of industrial workers across the region for generations. The room has pride of place at the award-winning Steel Stories exhibition at Kirkleatham Museum, near Redcar, which was created after designers talked to steelworkers and former steelworkers following the closure of the SSI steelworkers in Redcar in 2015. The room has recently been ‘refreshed’ in time for the museum’s reopening to make it more interactive and is filled with the sights, sounds and even smells or the plant environment.