A free festival celebrating County Durham’s mining heritage launches this Bank Holiday weekend.

The Easington Miners’ Picnic will feature live music from traditional colliery bands and local singers with children’s crafts, activities and food and drink stalls.

The festival, being held on the site of the former Easington Colliery at Easington Local Nature Reserve, opens at 11am on Saturday with a traditional miners’ banner parade accompanied by music from Easington Colliery Brass Band.

County-Durham based folk singer Jez Lowe, country artist Gem Andrews and The Baghdaddies complete the musical line-up.

There will be a pop-up exhibition curated by Newcastle-based film and photography collective Amber Films featuring photographs and memorabilia celebrating Easington’s history.

Easington Colliery workers. Circa 1977
Easington Colliery workers. Circa 1977

Festival organiser Michelle Harland from Creative Youth Opportunities CIC, said: “The Easington Miners’ Picnic is a celebration of the community and an opportunity to bring together people across the generations to explore what Easington means to them.

“As well as commemorating Easington’s mining heritage and educating younger generations about the history of the village, the festival is an opportunity to look forward and celebrate the wonderful and unique natural landscape that has emerged from Country Durham’s industrial past.”

The event is supported by the National Trust as part of the national People’s Landscapes programme which explores the hidden histories of beautiful landscapes.

The National Trust is working with the community, partners and artists to explore the area’s industrial and social heritage, and how people’s actions and events have helped shape the landscape of the Durham Heritage Coast.

Eric Wilton, general manager for the National Trust Durham Coast, said: “We look after five miles of the dramatic Durham coastline which has emerged from its industrial past to become a haven for wildlife, including wildflowers and butterflies.

The Durham Heritage Coast at Easington
The Durham Heritage Coast at Easington

“Once home to one of the biggest coal mines in Europe, at Easington, the former ‘black beaches’ were transformed by a massive clean-up project, Turning the Tide, in the 1990s, but this landscape has been shaped by social as well as environmental change.

“Through the People’s Landscapes programme we’re working with the local community to explore the area’s industrial heritage and residents’ evolving relationships with the coast.”

The National Trust is working with Amber to host special events during 2019 to mark key moments in the history of the area, and look at life during and after the closure of Easington Colliery and the resulting clean-up effort.

A new poem, written by poets in residence Phoebe Power and Katrina Porteous, on the environmental transformation of the Durham coastline, have its debut as part of the Durham Book Festival.

As part of the People’s Landscapes programme, the National Trust has also released a new podcast presented by Terry Deary, author of the Horrible Histories books, looking at Easington, and the community’s relationship with the National Trust when they came to help clear up their beach after the closure of the mine.

The episodes can be found at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/peoples-landscapes/id1475110464