The Great Exhibition of the North: Preserving History

In the summer of 2018, a monumental cultural shift occurred along the banks of the River Tyne. The twin cities of Newcastle and Gateshead transformed themselves into a sprawling, urban canvas for the “Great Exhibition of the North” (GEOTN). This was not merely a festival; it was a strategic cultural mega-event designed to fundamentally reframe the narrative of Northern England. Operating against the complex political backdrop of the “Northern Powerhouse” initiative, the Exhibition had a specific and ambitious mandate: to project an identity that was not solely rooted in a nostalgic, sepia-toned industrial past. Instead, it sought to draw a continuous, glowing line of innovation extending from the steam age directly into the digital revolution.

At the very heart of this curatorial endeavor were two ambitious, interlinked heritage projects: “A History of the North in 100 Objects” and its documentary counterpart, “A History of the North in 100 Archives.” These initiatives attempted a difficult intellectual feat: to distill the complex, polyphonic history of a vast region - spanning from the Scottish borders down to Cheshire - into a cohesive, digestible selection of material culture and documentary evidence. This report provides an exhaustive retrospective of these projects, evaluating their success in constructing a regional identity and, critically, analyzing their fragile digital legacy.

1. The Strategic and Geopolitical Context

To truly understand the significance of the Great Exhibition of the North, one must first situate it within the specific geopolitical landscape of the United Kingdom in the mid-2010s. For decades, the UK economy has been characterized by a profound centralization of wealth, political power, and cultural infrastructure in London and the South East. The “Northern Powerhouse” initiative, championed by the then-Chancellor George Osborne, was ostensibly an economic strategy. It was designed to aggregate the strengths of the North’s great cities - Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool, Hull, and Sheffield - into a unified economic entity capable of acting as a counterweight to the capital.

However, regions are defined by more than just transport links, high-speed rail, and trade agreements; they are defined by shared narratives. The North of England, with its distinct industrial heritage, rich dialectal diversity, and massive cultural output, has long possessed a strong identity. Yet, this identity has often been externally codified through the lens of decline. The “grim up North” stereotype - images of closed collieries, smokestacks, and post-industrial decay - has persisted in the national consciousness. The Great Exhibition of the North was conceived as a deliberate cultural intervention to disrupt this teleology. Its goal was to present the North not as a museum of the Industrial Revolution, but as a “living laboratory” of innovation, art, and design.

The genesis of the Exhibition dates back to April 2016, when the government launched a competition to host the event. This attracted bids from across the region, including strong contenders like Halifax, Sheffield, and Bradford. Ultimately, Newcastle and Gateshead were selected as the joint hosts. Their vision was to utilize their dramatic quayside topography and existing world-class cultural assets - The Sage Gateshead, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, and the Great North Museum: Hancock - as the stage for an 80-day festival.

Unlike the original Great Exhibition of 1851, which centralized the world’s wares in the singular, purpose-built Crystal Palace, GEOTN 2018 was a decentralized, urban intervention. It wove the exhibition into the fabric of the city itself, forcing visitors to traverse the physical environment of the North East. The programming was structured around three thematic trails - Art, Design, and Innovation - which physically guided visitors through the cityscape. This structure was designed to facilitate “placemaking,” a strategy where cultural events are used to alter the perception of a location, making it more attractive for investment, tourism, and habitation.

2. Curatorial Strategy: Constructing “The North”

A central paradox of the Exhibition was its reliance on history to project a future-oriented identity. To demonstrate “innovation,” the organizers had to excavate the past. The narrative logic posited that the region’s contemporary capabilities in digital tech, renewable energy, and life sciences were not new phenomena but the latest iteration of a “pioneering spirit” that had existed for centuries.

Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) led this heritage component, tasked with curating a definitive list of objects and archives that would substantiate this narrative. The resulting projects were not mere collections of artifacts; they were rhetorical arguments. Each object and document was selected to prove a specific thesis: that the North is, and always has been, a crucible of global change.

The “Call for Content” Methodology

The curation of the “100 Objects” and “100 Archives” was notable for its distributed, democratic methodology. Rather than a small team of curators in Newcastle selecting items from a centralized list, TWAM issued a “call for content” to accredited museums and archive services across the entire North of England. This approach had several strategic advantages:

• Regional Buy-in: It ensured that institutions in the North West (e.g., Liverpool, Manchester) and Yorkshire (e.g., Leeds, Sheffield, Hull) felt ownership of an event hosted in the North East.
• Narrative Diversity: It allowed for the inclusion of hyper-local stories that a central curator might miss, ensuring the “North” was represented in its rural, industrial, and coastal variety.
• Capacity Building: It encouraged smaller museums to engage with high-profile digital platforms, digitizing items that might otherwise remain in storage.

To organize the diverse array of submissions, the project established ten thematic categories. These themes served as the taxonomy of Northern identity, defining the parameters of what was considered significant:

1. Travel & Transport: Acknowledging the region’s seminal role in the history of locomotion.
2. Art & Design: Validating the aesthetic contributions of the region.
3. Work & Industry: The backbone of the Northern economy.
4. Religion & Faith: Exploring the spiritual history from medieval saints to modern diversity.
5. Inventions & Innovations: The core theme of the GEOTN.
6. Sport & Leisure: Recognizing the cultural dominance of Northern football and recreation.
7. Music & Entertainment: From brass bands to The Beatles and rave culture.
8. Landscape & Natural History: The “Sublime” North of the Lakes and Pennines.
9. Politics & Protest: The radical tradition of Chartism, suffrage, and unions.
10. Words & Literature: The literary heritage of the Brontës and poets.

One of the most interesting aspects of the project was its definition of “The North.” While the core regions were the North East, North West, and Yorkshire, the inclusion of items from the Coventry Archives (specifically the Charter of Incorporation) suggests a flexible, perhaps historically fluid definition of the region’s influence, or essentially strong institutional partnerships that transcended strict administrative boundaries. This inclusivity allowed the Exhibition to claim narratives that bled into the Midlands, reinforcing the idea of a “Northern” sphere of influence that expanded and contracted over centuries.

3. Case Study: A History of the North in 100 Objects

The “100 Objects” project was the flagship heritage initiative. Funded by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), it aimed to create a “virtual exhibition” where users could explore items that were physically dispersed across hundreds of miles.

Icons of Industry: The Heavyweights

Inevitably, the selection was anchored by the titans of the Industrial Revolution. These objects served as the “tentpoles” of the collection, drawing public attention and grounding the narrative in globally recognized achievements.

Stephenson’s Rocket was the headline act. The return of Rocket to Newcastle was treated as a major homecoming. Designed by Robert Stephenson in 1829, Rocket won the Rainhill Trials and set the template for the steam locomotive for the next century. Usually housed in the Science Museum in London or the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, its loan to the Discovery Museum in Newcastle was a symbolic repatriation. It attracted 176,000 visitors in just 80 days. Rocket is not just a train; it is the “Point Zero” of the shrinking world, the moment distance became conquerable by speed.

Complementing the land speed was Turbinia, housed permanently in the Discovery Museum. Built by Charles Parsons in 1894, it was the first vessel powered by steam turbines. Its inclusion highlights a specific Northern trait celebrated by the Exhibition: audacity. Parsons famously gate-crashed the 1897 Diamond Jubilee Fleet Review at Spithead, his small vessel easily outrunning the fastest ships of the Royal Navy to prove the superiority of his technology. This narrative of the “plucky Northern inventor” disrupting the establishment was a recurring motif. Additionally, Timothy Hackworth’s ‘Sans Pareil’, the competitor to Rocket, was included. Housed at Locomotion in Shildon, this object connected the exhibition to the “cradle of the railways” in County Durham and demonstrated that the North was an ecosystem of competition, not just a series of isolated geniuses.

The Aesthetic and Radical North

Moving beyond the “clanking machinery” stereotype, the list emphasized the region’s contribution to visual culture and social progress. L.S. Lowry’s ‘The Old Town Hall’, nominated by MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art), captures the essence of the Northern cityscape. Lowry’s visual language - smoke, crowds, mills - has become the de facto aesthetic of the industrial North. Including this work acknowledged that the North’s identity is visual as well as functional; it validated the “grim” landscape as a subject of high art.

From the Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections came The Buzzcocks’ Love You More Record Sleeve. Designed by Malcolm Garrett, the sleeve art represents the “Madchester” and punk era, a time when Northern identity shifted from production (goods) to consumption and creation (culture). It linked the 1970s creative explosion to the same spirit of innovation found in 19th-century engineering.

The Suffrage Banner from Oldham (Gallery Oldham) served as a potent symbol of political radicalism. It connects the female textile workforce of Lancashire to the national struggle for democracy. It serves as a reminder that the North was often the engine room of political change, not just economic production. Similarly, the Annfield Plain Co-op Store from Beamish Museum represented the Co-operative movement. Starting in Rochdale, this is perhaps the North’s greatest social export - a business model based on equity and community dividend, representing the moral economy of the North.

Innovation in Unexpected Places

The project excelled in highlighting innovations that occurred outside the famous heavy industries. The Fluothane Anaesthetic Bottle, nominated by the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre in Widnes, represents a massive leap in medical science. Developed in the ICI Research Lab, Fluothane replaced dangerous chloroform and ether, revolutionizing surgery globally. This choice was strategic: it placed the chemical industry of the North West on par with the engineering of the North East, broadening the definition of “industry”.

Finally, the list included items that spoke to the deep time and eccentricity of the region, such as the Musical Stones of Skiddaw from Keswick Museum. This lithophone (a xylophone made of stone) is a quintessential “cabinet of curiosities” object, representing the intersection of the Cumbrian landscape (geology) and Victorian leisure.

4. Case Study: A History of the North in 100 Archives

While “100 Objects” focused on three-dimensional items, Tyne & Wear Archives recognized that documents - the written word, the map, the photograph - tell a different, often more detailed story. To address this, they secured funding from The National Archives’ Sector Sustainability Fund to create a parallel project: “A History of the North in 100 Archives.”

This project faced a distinct challenge: documents are less visually arresting than steam trains. To mitigate this, the selection criteria explicitly prioritized items with “strong visual images” that would work well on social media platforms. The project utilized the same Content Management System (CMS) as the 100 Objects site, a strategic decision to maximize budget efficiency and ensure user experience consistency.

The 100 archives selected provided the evidentiary basis for the claims of innovation and creativity. The 100th item added to the collection was a contribution from The National Archives itself: a page from the Domesday Book (1086) relevant to the North. This was a prestigious “bookend” to the project, linking the region’s history to the foundational document of the English state. It served to show that the North has always been a distinct, recorded entity within the national consciousness.

Other key selections included photographic archives documenting the construction of the Tyne Bridge, which were among the most popular items on social media. These images function as “secular icons” for Geordies - images that define the very shape of the city. Their inclusion underscores the power of the archive to hold the “blueprint” of civic identity. Additionally, the Charter of Incorporation (1345) from Coventry Archives was included, representing the legal foundations of urban autonomy and the spread of municipal rights.

Beyond the public exhibition, the “100 Archives” project had a profound impact on the professional sector. TWAM held a vote across its nine venues to select the final items from over 100 submissions. This internal democracy raised the profile of the archives team within the wider museum structure. Furthermore, a “100 Archives Open Day” held at the Discovery Museum attracted 331 visitors. This is a significant number for an archives searchroom, proving that digital exposure can successfully convert online interest into physical footfall. For many smaller archives, this was their first foray into a major digital campaign, providing a framework for upskilling staff in digitization, copyright clearance, and social media storytelling.

5. The Digital Legacy Crisis: A Forensic Analysis

As of the writing of this retrospective, the digital legacy of the Great Exhibition of the North is in a state of collapse. Both primary domains - 100objectsnorth.co.uk and 100archivesnorth.co.uk - are inaccessible or parked. The “virtual exhibition” that was promised to be kept live for the “foreseeable future” has vanished.

This loss is not trivial. The websites contained high-resolution images of the 100 objects and archives, interpretive essays written by curators and experts (such as Lucy Deprez’s narratives), user-generated content in the form of personal galleries, and educational resources linked to the objects. Now, the only remnants of this massive curatorial effort are scattered blog posts, press releases, and third-party news articles.

This failure is a textbook example of the “Digital Dark Age” phenomenon in the heritage sector. It highlights a structural flaw in how cultural projects are funded:

1. Short-Termism: Funding cycles are typically 3-5 years. There is rarely an endowment mechanism to pay for domain registration, hosting, and security patching for 20+ years.
2. Microsite Fragility: Creating bespoke microsites with unique URLs is a high-risk strategy. When the project team disbands, no one is left to manage the renewal notices.
3. Technological Obsolescence: The decision to reuse the CMS for the archives project as a “contract clause” utilization was a smart efficiency measure in 2018, but it created a single point of failure. If the underlying technology became obsolete, both sites would go down together.

The irony of the title “Preserving History” is stark. Physical: Stephenson’s Rocket is safe. It is conserved, insured, and physically robust. It will likely exist in 2118. Digital: The digital exhibition of the Rocket - the context, the story, the user interaction - lasted less than a decade. This comparison reveals that while the UK heritage sector has mastered material preservation, it is still in its infancy regarding digital preservation. We are building “digital sandcastles” that are washed away by the tide of technological obsolescence as soon as the funding stops.

6. Economic and Social Impact Evaluation

Despite the digital failures, the physical exhibition was a measurable success. The event attracted millions of visitors to Newcastle and Gateshead. Visitor expenditure in NewcastleGateshead rose by 4% in 2018 to £1.76 billion, a direct result of the GEOTN.

The “Dippy Effect” played a crucial role. The Great North Museum: Hancock hosted Dippy, the famous Diplodocus skeleton from the Natural History Museum. This single object was a massive draw, generating a “halo effect” for the rest of the exhibition. Additionally, Stephenson’s Rocket alone attracted 176,000 visitors, an 80% increase for the Discovery Museum compared to the same period in the previous year.

The primary goal of GEOTN was to change the narrative of the North. In this, it largely succeeded. By showcasing local contributions to global history (from the lightbulb to the steam turbine), the exhibition fostered a sense of civic pride. The “100 Objects” project allowed locals to see their own history elevated to the status of national treasure. Externally, the Exhibition successfully projected an image of the North East as a modern, cultural destination, moving the needle on its reputation from “post-industrial” to “creative hub.”

The educational legacy was also significant. The exhibition ran an extensive “Inspired by” programme involving schools and community groups. The focus on innovation (Rocket, Graphene, Turbinia) was used to inspire engagement in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) among Northern schoolchildren. Furthermore, the event mobilized an army of volunteers known as the “Game Changers,” creating a legacy of civic participation that persisted after the event closed.

7. Conclusion

The Great Exhibition of the North 2018 was a landmark moment in the cultural history of the region. It successfully marshalled the forces of history - from the Rocket to the Domesday Book - to construct a compelling argument for the North’s continued relevance and vitality. The “100 Objects” and “100 Archives” projects were the intellectual keystones of this effort, proving that the North’s identity is a rich tapestry of industry, art, radicalism, and invention.

However, the decay of its digital legacy is a sombre warning. The “Preserving History” title of this report refers not just to the objects in glass cases, but to the history of the Exhibition itself. We have preserved the artifacts, but we have lost the exhibition. The digital connective tissue that bound these objects into a story of “Northern Power” has frayed and broken. For the Northern Powerhouse to have a history that endures as long as its iron bridges, the heritage sector must treat its digital assets with the same reverence it treats its steam engines. A website, like a locomotive, requires maintenance, fuel, and a track to run on. Without them, it becomes a ghost train - remembered by those who saw it, but invisible to those who come after.

References & Further Reading

• The Great Exhibition of the North: Preserving History (Executive Summary)
• Annual Report and Accounts 2018–19, Science Museum Group
• Evaluation of Heritage Lottery Fund’s First World War Centenary Activity: Year 4 Report
• Vision Statement, North East Museums
• A History of the North in 100 Objects: A Great Exhibition of the North Project