Announcements and events
EXHIBITION: What Are Words Worth2U2?
29 April – 8 May 2026
Gallery North, Northumbria University
Programme Northumbria presents What Are Words Worth 2U2?, an interdisciplinary, cross-artform festival that asks what language does, who it belongs to, and what it costs. Bringing together researchers, artists, and writers, the festival celebrates and interrogates translingual practices; queer, reclaimed, unstable, and overheard vocabularies; vernacular, dialect, and informal speech; legal, bureaucratic, and institutional languages; and poetic, performative, and invented forms.
Curated by Matthew Hearn and Sarah Jackson, the programme features research and practice by Northumbria University staff, students, and alumni, alongside selected works by invited artists and writers.
Since the day the UK went into lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic, I have produced a graphic diary every day. Knowing that I would struggle with the disruption to my routine, lack of access to my studio and to my friends, I began the diaries as a way to maintain a daily creative practice. Aware of their function in my life, I continued her daily diary practice when lockdown ended, with the archive currently consisting of over 2,200 diaries and growing.
I present here a selection of the diaries matching the exhibition dates across six years. My ongoing daily diary practice underpins my research as a PhD student at Northumbria University, and as such, I will be adding diary entries to the display for the duration of the exhibition.
Helen Shaddock – In Conversation
Thursday 30th April 2026
1:30pm -2:00pm
To accompany my installation of graphic diaries in Gallery North, I will discuss the intersection of words and images in my practice.
