Our First Three Years

2014
Year One
Great North Passion
April 2014
The Great North Passion
was commissioned by the
BBC’s Religious and Ethics
department and became
The Cultural Spring’s launch
event. It took place on April
18, Good Friday, and was
the BBC’s flagship Easter
programme - broadcast
live at noon by BBC1. The
Great North Passion won
Best Event Tyneside and Best
Overall Event at the 2014
Journal North East Culture
Awards.
At its peak, 1.3m viewers
watched the broadcast, which
was hosted by Fern Britton.
Viewing figures claimed
more than a third of North
Easterners watching TV at
that time were watching the
broadcast.
The project was the
culmination of six week’s worth
of community engagement.
It brought together more
than 20 artists with 12 local
communities including
schools, churches, community
associations and heritage sites
to explore different themes
of Christ’s Passion - Truth,
Burden, Exhaustion, Loss,
Kindness, Falling, Hope,
Humility, Forgiveness and Self
Sacrifice.
Twelve red shipping
containers, each representing
an individual theme or
Station of the Cross, were
transformed with a variety of
different interpretive art forms
and placed in Bents Park,
South Shields, forming the
shape of a massive cross.
More than 3,500 people
attended the event and
subsequent weekend
exhibition. Shipping container
content included bespoke
pieces of music, intricate
lighting displays, sculptures,
spray paint murals, poetry
and photography projects.
Rebecca Ball, then Project
Director of the Cultural
Spring, said: “Although the
Passion was held on Good
Friday as part of the Christian
festival of Easter, it was
important for us and the BBC
that this was seen as an interfaith
event that explored the
universality of the Passion’s
themes.”
1.3m
viewers
watched the
broadcast
20 artists
12 local
communities
06 07