At the end of June, I took part in a talk as part of the first Middlesbrough Storytelling Festival - a fitting place to share "Drawn to the Boro", a project so bound up with the town and its stories.

We were hosted by Flok, the independent co-working space built, in their own words, "in and for Middlesbrough" - founded by Imran Anwar and his wife Anila. There was something fitting in that too: Imran is one of the ten sitters for the project.

My thanks also to the organisers who made the afternoon possible: Borderlands, Middlesbrough Council, Teesside University and the National Literacy Trust, as part of the National Year of Reading 2026. It was a real pleasure to talk with 3 of the sitters and hear them share their stories to an audience so generous with their attention.

Events like this are why the project matters so much to me. Part of what we are losing as a society is the simple practice of sitting down and listening to someone whose experience is very different to our own. Portraiture and storytelling are unique mediums for that kind of attention; they ask everyone to slow down, look & listen carefully, and be willing to revise.