Durham Miners Gala: Limited Edition Prints
Durham Miners Gala – Limited Edition Artist Print
Durham City,
2024 – ongoing
*Producing
Hosted by the Durham Miners Association since 1871, the Durham Miners Gala is the world’s greatest celebration of community, international solidarity, and working class life.
As part of a long-standing relationship with the Durham Miners Gala, we’ve worked closely with the team to help expand their creative output. In recent years we’ve gradually establishing a new tradition of commissioning limited edition artist prints for the event.
Rooted in the ephemera and spirit of mining heritage and the collective pride celebrated each year at the world’s largest gathering of working-class culture, the print offers a space for creative response and reinterpretation.
Continuing creative legacy
Responding to the current theme, artists are given full freedom to draw inspiration from this rich cultural seam.
From banner making to protest art, brass bands to the Pitmen Painters – art and creativity have always been an intrinsic part of these cultures, so marking each year with a newly commissioned design allows for a natural and meaningful continuation of that legacy whilst raising funds.
Together with Durham Miners Gala, we’ve also developed a model where the artist’s work becomes the visual identity for the Gala that year. The commissioned artwork informs posters, online promotion, merchandise and more, creating a consistent look and feel across the event.
This opens up a more accessible route for people to support the Gala by owning a piece of that year’s design – whether through prints, mugs, t-shirts or other items – while still contributing to the cause.
2025 print
We Are Still Here!
Bob and Roberta Smith, 2025
Patrick Brill (b. 1963), known professionally as Bob and Roberta Smith, is a British contemporary artist, writer, musician and passionate advocate for art education.
Renowned for his iconic slogan-based artwork, his best-known pieces include Make Art Not War (1997), now held in the Tate collection, and Letter to Michael Gove (2011), a protest artwork addressing the then-Education Secretary.
Bob and Roberta Smith see art as an important element in democratic life. Much of their art takes the form of painted signs. Central to Bob and Roberta Smith’s thinking is the idea that campaigns are extended art works.
For the 2025 Gala, he has created a bold, text-based work titled We Are Still Here! The artwork celebrates the resilience and solidarity of our Durham Coalfield communities keeping our traditions alive more than a generation on from the Miners Strike and colliery closures. The print features the names of the 77 communities of the Durham Coalfield that in 2025 have active banner groups keeping the flame alive. Each year, more than 60 of these communities parade their banners in Durham on Gala day.
The original artwork, hand-painted on plywood, has been expertly digitised for the giclée printing process. Each print will be professionally produced on fine art paper, through a partnership with independent studio Prints of Thieves.
All proceeds from this time-limited edition will go directly to support the Gala.
Print size: A3
Process: Giclee
Paper: Fotospeed Studio Etching Rag 295gsm
Each print will be individually numbered and signed by the artist
Previous years
Solidarity Forever!
Theresa Easton, 2024
The limited edition print initiative launched to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 Miners Strike.
Produced especially for the 2024 Durham Miners Gala, ‘Solidarity Forever’ took inspiration from the iconography of the strike – handmade placards, bold simple text, and big powerful slogans.
Created by artist Theresa Easton, it tied in with the theme of the 2024 Gala, evocative of the time and the solidarity that sustained the strike for a year, it is also forward facing, celebrating the comradery, community and spirit that sustains the Gala to this day.
Theresa is a printmaker, community artist and Lecturer in Fine Art at Newcastle University. Community participation and political activism feature as a driving force in her work. Printmaking provides a platform for her activism and interest in social history, and heritage interpretation. She is one of the founding members of Artists’ Union England, a trade union formed 10 years ago for visually & applied artists and artists with a socially engaged practice.
‘Solidarity Forever’ was hand printed using screenprinting and traditional letterpress wooden type. Printed onto Fabrianno Rosaspina Bianco, each print was signed, dated and numbered by the artist.
https://theresaeaston.wordpress.com/
