The Ashington Group

It’s rare that I’m moved to tears by the performance of actors on a stage but that’s exactly what happened yesterday afternoon, that is, when I wasn’t laughing and almost cheering for joy. My hands were quite worn out at the end as I applauded eight fine actors from the National Theatre (UK) and Live Theatre Newcastle, UK, who were directed by Max Roberts in the play, The Pitmen Painters.

The play was based on the book of that name written in 1988 by William Feaver. As trustee of the art that is on permanent show in the Woodhorn Colliery Museum in Ashington, Feaver describes how a group of miners, who had spent five years doing an Ashington WEA class on Evolution, wanted a change. They decided on Art Appreciation with lecturer Robert Lyon, a decision that changed the course of their lives utterly. The group operated as a unit and became known as the Ashington Group. They were respected and accepted by the established art world that hitherto would not have considered untutored workingmen their equal in their rarefied cultured world of privilege.

Quickly realising that he had to take a different approach, Robert Lyon persuaded the miners to paint themselves without bothering about convention using the method, ‘learning by doing; learning by seeing’. The men painted at home and brought pictures in for Lyon to critique at their weekly meeting. They used household Walpamur paint bought in bulk, used plywood and primed cardboard and made their own canvas by stretching butter muslin on boards and priming them. Their purpose was to produce work to get behind the artist and try to appreciate his purpose and methods. Their considerable achievement is a body of work that is a significant record of a community, an industry and a way of life that has disappeared.

"When I paint as we do in our group I have a feeling of freedom," Wilson wrote in 1945. "There is a feeling of being my own boss for a change. When I have done a piece of painting I feel that something has happened, not only to the panel or canvas but to myself. For a time I have enjoyed a sense of mastery - of having made something real."

The playwright, Lee Hall, came across a copy of Feaver’s book in a second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road and realised that this would be perfect for his next project. Hall had been commissioned to write a play and was looking for a study of aspiration and the bondage of imposed and self-imposed limitations and The Pitmen Painters was ideal.

And he was right. The play was everything you could wish for: crackingly funny, superbly acted, perfectly cast, brilliantly directed, instructional, entertaining, relevant, and yes, touching. I went home on the 46a bus inspired and full of hope.