Drawn to the Boro is a series of ten large-scale portraits of Middlesbrough residents, each nominated as an unsung hero by their community and each an active participant in how they are represented. The ten sitters carry a range of migration stories — some who came from far away, some whose families came from somewhere nearer, all whose lives have shaped the town in their own way. Middlesbrough was built on migration, and the project takes that as its starting point. The exhibition opens in 2027. Drawn to the Boro is supported by Borderlands and Arts Council England.

Meet Mac.....

Mac arrived for our sitting with a warning. "I don't know what we're going to talk about for three hours," he said. "I don't talk much."

Three hours later he told me he felt as though he'd known me forever.

Mac came to Middlesbrough from Northern Ireland in the 1930s, brought by his Catholic parents to a town his family had chosen to make their home. He grew up playing in bomb sites during the war — a childhood detail that lands differently the older you get — and was later called up for National Service in Cyprus. It was there that he first encountered something he hadn't expected: when two soldiers from Northern Ireland discovered he was Catholic, they disowned him. The friendships dissolved overnight. He spoke about it without bitterness, more with a quiet puzzlement that such things were possible.

Back in Middlesbrough he fell in love with a Protestant girl. When they arrived together at a local dance they were told they weren't welcome. They didn't let other people's ignorance define them. They married, and went on to build a family that Mac speaks about with a tenderness that is rare in anyone and particularly rare in a man of his generation. He thinks the world of all of them. You can hear it in every sentence.

Mac spent his working life in the fire service. He shared some of what that life contained — the weight of it, the things that stay with you. At one point, recalling a road traffic accident in which two children had died, he shed tears. And somewhere in the hours we spent together, I found myself shedding tears too.

I think that says something about Mac. He created a space in which honesty felt not just possible but natural. I left that sitting feeling honoured that he had trusted me — and aware that I had been trusted with something precious.

Meet Zainab.....

The first thing I noticed about Zainab was her smile. It arrived before she had spoken a word — open, immediate, and with the warmth of someone who has decided to meet the world that way.

Zainab has lived in Middlesbrough since 2019. She was born in Iraq and came to the UK via Lebanon. She speaks about Middlesbrough with great energy and care, about what it has given her, what she hopes it will become.

When I asked how she would like to see the town evolve over the next five years, her answer stopped me. She said she would like to see people given the opportunity to work and contribute to their communities. There are many newcomers, she explained, who are not permitted to work under current government rules — and what she wanted me to understand was that their desperation to work was not just about money. It was about pride and purpose. The sense of being useful to the place that had become home.

That nuance — the instinct to look past the obvious and find the human thing underneath — runs through everything Zainab says.

I have been fortunate enough to meet her several times since our sitting, and what I've noticed is the effect she has on other people. She makes everyone around her feel included. She enthuses. She expresses gratitude — not as a performance, but as a genuine state. Her older daughter now works in medical research laboratories in Newcastle. Her younger daughter is still at college. She tells me about them with a quiet pride.