When is a local football club more than a local football club? When it’s a lifeline – and life support – for the children and young people who live around it. Ciaran Myers discovers one such club on Tyneside.   Newcastle Benfield is a Northern League football club in the heart of Walkergate, Newcastle – […]

A Tyneside nail technician has raised over £2,000 during a 24-hour nail-a-thon for the charity Tiny Lives. Lucy Walton completed 16 sets of nails, going without sleep for the whole period, and raised money through her Just Giving Page, a raffle, and appointment fees. Spark Sunderland visited a nervous Lucy at the start of her […]

Going Back Brockens is an exhibition, currently displayed at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, that revisits colliery sites, 40 years after the Miner’s Strike.  Why is it important that these stories are told years after they happened?  Narbi Price, the artist of the paintings within the exhibit, said: “We gain a richer understanding of what’s come before, what is happening now – […]

If variety is the spice of life, that’s certainly the case for the rising young stars at the region’s two top-ranking football teams. Ciaran Myers reports.   The North-East’s two Premier League clubs, Newcastle and Sunderland, have had their Under-21 squads competing on multiple fronts this season, with fixtures ranging from National League senior sides […]

REVIEW Say Nothing is not a comprehensive history of the Troubles – nor does it pretend to be.   The series focuses on the stories of a select group of people during the conflict; kidnapped Belfast mother Jean McConville, IRA members Brendan Hughes and Dolours and Marian Price, and former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams. As the show dutifully notes at the end of each episode, Adams has always […]