Midwinter Newsletter: Special Offers & Greetings
End of year round up + a special £30 annual Substack offer!
Dearest readers - festive greetings from the West Midlands. As the year winds down and settles into its darkest evenings, peppered with end-of-term exhaustion, novelty knitwear and out-of-office replies… I think it’s time to rest now! Whether you’re reading this on a train home for the holidays, a kitchen table strewn with wrapping paper, or in a brief pocket of calm before the storm - welcome to our end-of-year round-up.
As 2025 comes to a close, so too does our first year covering activity across the East and West Midlands, making this a fitting moment to reflect on Corridor8’s expansion southwards from the North of England. Over the past ten months we’ve published fifteen features and reviews spanning Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and Walsall, working hard to build relationships across this vast, yet interconnected and deeply proud regional ecology of arts organisations and writers.
A particular highlight has been celebrating Digbeth-based Grand Union’s fifteenth Birthday through a trilogy of commissioned texts exploring their relationship to people and place at a moment of rapid change in the area. In August, Stoke-on-Trent-based Anna Francis considered how artist-led organisations entangle with place, whilst in November, Derbyshire-based Sean Roy Parker examined what Social Practice can be within non-extractive, person-centred programming. In the new year Demi Nandhra will reflect on Grand Union’s increasingly radical exhibition programming from a critically anti-ableist perspective.
It has been a joy and a privilege to support critical writing emanating from and within the West Midlands this year. Looking ahead to 2026, exciting new collaborations are already taking shape and we cannot wait to share what’s coming next :)
£30 annual subscription offer!
Access our catalogue of exclusive long reads and support independent art writing in the North and Midlands for a special one-off annual price of £30. This not only pays our writers here, but also goes towards independent commissions on the site, like this one, so we can cover more artist-led and grassroots activity.
Barkle and Tranklements is flying off the shelves!
Our beautiful compendium of new ‘Art Writing from the Midlands’ is still available to buy online and/or in real life across the country at MAC, Birmingham; Two Queens, Leicester; Five Leaves Bookshop, Nottingham; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and The NewBridge Project, Newcastle upon Tyne - More stockists to come next year!
Round up of our reviews, features and interviews:
Stephen Emmerson: How to Read a Book at Portico Library, Manchester was reviewed by Richard Barrett, finding playful questions instead of stuffiness; ‘The Portico, today, deliberately opts to show books on its shelves exhibiting evidence of wear and tear, believing it’s important to show how collections were used then, and how the Portico, as contemporary custodians, treat the collection today to pass on to future generations.’
James Harper interviewed artist Angela Davies and responded to (To the) Heart of the Matter at Plas Glyn Y Weddw in North Wales.
The inaugural edition of The Tweed River Festival, taking place across three days in Peebles, was reviewed by Maria Howard in this expansive piece, Watery Commons: The Tweed River Festival 2025.
Our Place in the Arts: Creativity, community and quiet resilience in Stockton-on-Tees is a joyous reflection on arts and place by Harriet Mee, commissioned as part of The Collective Studio, an artist development programme at The NewBridge Project.
Obsessions, Possessions: Coventry Biennial is reviewed by Daniel Sean Kelly, finding that “our cultural obsessions and possessions are a battleground for sure – and in seeking to rebuild our cultural narratives, all must be up for grabs.”
In a special voluntary piece Ciara Leeming lays out the plight of Bankley Studios in Manchester, who are facing the threat of eviction in an all-too familiar story that highlights the precarity of even long-established artist-led organisations.
‘By presenting evidence in a clear-eyed, quasi-legal way, calling on experts from many fields, the CICC’s work helps the viewer to see the true intergenerational nature of climate crime.’ - Tessa Norton, on Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal, Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes: The British East India Company on Trial at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University, Leeds.
Continuing a narrative of displacement, the natural world and a commitment to justice and solidarity, Amrit Doll reviews Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom at Nottingham Contemporary.
Forming a poignant triptych with the previous to two pieces, Silvia Hassouna reviews Lintukoto and The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing at The Newbridge Project, as part of The Collective Studio.
In a powerful reflection on Corinne: The Severed Wing Amie Kirby asserts: ‘If there is one thing I wish would come from this piece, it’s that I want every able-bodied person in my life to watch it and really listen to what is being said. As Corinne pleads in the post-show video’s conclusion, ‘don’t ever forget us’.’
Amongst many recent pieces that face up to harsh realities whilst offering hope Simon Sylvester reviews Landscape & Protest: Signal Artist Lab at Cooke’s Studios, Barrow-in-Furness: ‘Against a backdrop of nuclear fire and haemorrhaging carbon, this is not premonition but promise: if we are to survive at all, the land must become something different. If we can reinvent our past, maybe we can reimagine our future.’
Love, solidarity and happy holidays from Kevin, Lauren, Lesley and the Corridor8 team!