Kate Fox has written her final poem as the Great North Run poet in residence.

Taking in fancy dress runners, the Red Arrows, hope, exhaustion and the fridge man, Kate's final blog can be read here... 

Mark Wallinger visited the 2011 Bupa Great North Run to start work on a new film for next year's culture programme.

The Turner Prize winner is creating an hour long single shot film from the viewpoint of the lead male athlete, taking in the open field from Newcastle through Gateshead out to South Shields. Shot on an HD camera from a specially modified vehicle, the film will form part of next year's culture programme.

We will be making announcements about our upcoming projects throughout the year so watch this space... 

Kate Fox talks about her Great North Run residency.

Her athletic poetry may be over for now but we've a great interview with Kate about her residency, where she talks about her hopes and plans for the 2011 event.

You can watch it here.

New photographs by Colin Davison of Cerith Wyn Evan's breathtaking installation Permit yourself... are online now.

In the heart of one of Sunderland's industrial quarters, Permit youself... is a large-scale kinetic sculpture formed from double-sided mirrors, with text intricately cut out of each panel and assembled as a huge mobile. 

This co-commission with Locus+ is open until 23 October, so you've just over a week left to see it...

We want to say a huge thanks to the 101,500 of you took part in Great North Run Culture this year – whether it was to see an exhibition, participate in a workshop, listen to an artist talk, come to an event or read Kate Fox’s fabulous poetry - or the 2 million of you who watched us on BBC ONE! - thank you all.

Finally, we’re very grateful to our funders, Arts Council England, Bupa Great North Run and the Barbour Foundation, and to all the partners, volunteers and venues we work with every year who make Bupa Great North Run Culture possible.

See you all next year!

I have been working on my Changemakers project for a couple of months now and things are really beginning to take off.

The project consists of two main elements:

1) Helping the team to develop communications strategies that will reach and engage a younger audience and also

2) Working with GNRC’s poet in residence from last year, Kate Fox, to create workshops for 11 – 14 year olds. These will provide the research and backbone for Kate’s new show ‘The starting line’ which will be performed during the Great North Run Culture 2012 programme, and produced by the ARC in Stockton.

Last week I managed to get some work done on both elements of the project on the same day! On Tuesday I came to the GNRC office to present some research I had collected on successful and not-so successful examples of communications to target and captivate younger people, from which I made some more general and useful conclusions about what works for young people and what really doesn’t on Facebook and Twitter. We figured that getting the balance between cultural jargon-loaded and random ‘trying too hard’ posts/ tweets is crucial!

After this I went to Northern Stage for a meeting with Kate Fox herself. Over coffee, we discussed the nature of the research element of her forthcoming workshops and her ideas about the link between creativity (writing) and activity (running). We pondered the questions of what stops young people exercising at that age? What would make us actively and independently choose to write or run? And what would convince young people to get stuck in and do rather than just watch? It is these questions that we decided to base the workshops around discovering the answers to; we await and anticipate some interesting responses from the groups.

And so, there’s a lot to be getting on with in working out the best way to discover these answers and get the best out of the groups in the workshops!

Equally as nervous, Kate Fox and I welcomed the young people in and apprehensively poured orange juice for all those there. After some ice breakers and warm-ups we got down to business by ‘writing with our running minds’ as Kate set the group away with writing non stop for two minutes using an imaginative stimulus – not as easy as it sounds. Then onto ‘running with a writing mind’ as the 11 -15 year olds have to balance a tennis ball between their foreheads in pairs and move, in silence, throughout the space requiring focus and fitness. A round of much appreciated juices later and Kate sums up with a discussion session about pondering the following: “Body image concerns put people off exercising” and “People would write more if writers were cooler” from which Kate and I carefully noted the interesting and thought-provoking responses.

One workshop down with only one to go; after a couple of alterations to our plan for the Thursday session Kate and I set away once more with a second group of young people to research and provide accurate info straight from the audience themselves for her up and coming script of ‘The Starting Line’. Proving themselves to be as intriguing as the Monday group, Kate managed to walk out of the Tyneside Cinema at 4.30pm with bucket loads of responses and pointers to shape and tailor-make her show so that we, the audience, will get as much out of it as possible come September. As for me, I leave the cinema feeling relieved that the recruited participants turned up and seemed to have a good time, just as excited as Kate herself about the impact of the hour and a half sessions.

With this element of my Changemakers project well and truly underway, I turned my attention last week to the 6-10 recommendations I have to make for Great North Run Culture. These are to be completed by the end of March so the clock is ticking to delve into the organisation to find out as much as I can so that my recommendations are as useful as possible both for Beth and the team, as well as young people like myself. 

“What, some people have muscle fibres that twitch especially fast?”, “Running makes the neurons in your brain connect up better?” and even obvious ones that most people already knew, like “Eating Mars Bars for three meals a day will making running harder”. I wished I’d known some of the stuff about the connection between body and brain when I was growing up.

Then before I knew it Beth at Great North Run Culture, Kaye at the Manchester Children’s Book Festival and Annabel at ARC had agreed that it would be a good idea to make a show for families about how running and writing are more similar than you’d think. The Starting Line was born. I do like a pun, me.

For starters, the show will not be mentioning the words “Health” and “Exercise”. It’s about being active, enjoying what you do and feeling good. I also won’t be demonising any foods. Chocolate is good, just not all the time and you can find ways to burn it off. Incentives like living longer are a bit long term, but showing  young people why they’ll find exams easier or be in a better mood if they eat a varied diet is more likely to have an effect. It’s not as if I can be an aspirational example of astounding physical and mental fitness. I’ve realised I do have something to pass on though. My new enthusiasm for finding both mental and physical activities to be enthusiastic about. I can feel my neurons connecting up at this very moment...  

Featuring two Turner Prize winning artists – Douglas Gordon and Mark Wallinger, the return of our 2011 Poet in Residence Kate Fox with a one woman show for families, a billboard exhibition by Newcastle-based photographer Dan Holdsworth and a new film by winners of our 2012 Moving Image Commission, Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry.

For more details, including dates, venues and how to book tickets, visit www.greatnorthrunculture.org/programme.