A play about a WEA class of coal miner artists in the 1930’s may be about to make its way from Newcastle to London’s West End. The Pitmen Painters, which started out at Newcastle's Live Theatre, had a sold out run at London's National Theatre in June.

The play by Lee Hall, writer of Billy Elliot, has received rave reviews from audiences and critics alike, and has also had Prime Minister Gordon Brown transfixed, according the Guardian newspaper.

The play is based in Ashington, a former pit town in Northumberland, and follows the story of a WEA tutor Robert Lyons, who was to take a class in art appreciation for a group of local miners in 1934.

The pitmen began to come together in 1927 as each of the men became members of Ashington WEA. Posters in Ashington advertising a WEA class on ‘Evolution’ had originally sparked some of the men’s interest.

At that time the WEA described itself as, ‘A Federation of over 2500 Organisations, linking labour with learning’, and encouraged would-be students with the statement, ‘an enquiring mind is sufficient qualification’.

Harry Wilson, was Secretary of Ashington WEA. Gassed in the War and declared unfit to be a miner he was a dental mechanic. ‘Except for the person I worked for I had no friends in Ashington but in the WEA I soon found myself among friends’ he said.¹

For seven years the group studied various subjects until, Wilson said, ‘we were at a dead end again so we started on Art’.

The WEA and Durham University Extra Mural Board despatched tutor Robert Lyons to Ashington. Art critic, William Feaver describes what happened next in his book ‘Pitmen Painters’:

“Normal practice at evening classes was to sit in rows listening to the tutor. ‘When Lyon arrived,’ Oliver Kilbourn [a member of the group] said, ‘he started by giving us lectures illustrated by black and white slides on an old-fashioned lantern. These were mainly of Renaissance paintings and either religious or mythological subjects. As we didn’t then know the Greek myths we were rather baffled and didn’t really get anywhere with this.’”

Tutor and artist Robert Lyon was equally baffled says William Feaver in the book.

After showing works of art to the unimpressed group, Lyons suggested the men try painting for themselves. Encouraged by their tutor the group began learning how to paint.

Their paintings depicted ordinary, every day scenes of life in Ashington but the images were painted with such an expression of feeling that the group soon found themselves, and their work, taken up by the art world at large.

For playwright Lee Hall, who found his inspiration for the play in Feaver’s book, the play is as much about politics as it is about painting.

‘These pitmen had a tradition of organised labour which provided places of solidarity which made possible this kind of intellectualism,’ Hall comments in the Guardian newspaper. ‘They were profoundly concerned with creativity and how that linked to personal growth and collective understanding - how you learn and the relationships, with teachers, with peers, in that process.’
In a correspondence with the WEA, he states:

‘I believe a democracy can only work properly, and indeed a culture can only be deemed rich at all if it does not exclude people from it. Understanding the arts, history, the workings of our culture, including creative contributions towards it are essential to the common good.’

‘The point of education has never simply been the acquiring of skills. To know and understand the world around us is what makes us human and civilised. As a society it is what makes us tolerant and able to grow.’

‘The right to an education, to access to the arts, to cultivating oneself beyond the immediate requirements for survival or the most basic diversions from this hard work, were won as a result of enormous struggle. It really wasn't long ago that the majority of people were excluded from any access to culture or education at all.’

Hall’s comments will strike a cord, not just with the WEA but with the adult education sector as a whole.

The government’s just-concluded consultation on the future of informal (non-accredited) adult learning asks questions about how education, such as that experienced by the Ashington men, can be funded and by whom. Would the Pitmen Painters have prospered in today’s funding climate?

The play itself has so far been described as humorous, important, moving, grave and inspiring and has left the public wanting more.

The National Theatre has even set up a waiting list for disappointed theatre-goers who are hoping for a new supply of tickets should the play move to London’s West End.

Links of interest on the Ashington Group:

The Ashington Group at Woodhorn Colliery Museum
Full text of Lee Hall’s correspondence with the WEA
Review of the play by Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian
WEA response to government consultation on Informal Adult Learning
National Theatre mailing list for West End transfer

¹ Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934-1984, William Feaver. Carcanet Press 1993.