This Is The North

Alison Dunn

The North has a rich history of world-changing industry, invention and social progress. It is also home to persistent inequalities in opportunity, wealth and health. So what happened? What can we learn from the past, what is changing now, and what would it take to build a stronger future for the North? This Is The North explores the evidence behind those questions. Hosted by Alison Dunn MBE, charity chief executive and social justice advocate, the podcast brings together academics, business leaders, community voices and charity leaders to understand the forces shaping the region and the choices available to us. We explore the North’s green energy and industrial transition, housing and affordability, jobs and skills, and the people, industries and ideas that can help shape its future. We ask what the evidence tells us, who is affected, what is already working, and what needs to change. This Is The North comes from the North, is about the North, and believes the region should help define its own future. This Is The North: Evidence and ideas for a stronger North. Connect with Alison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisondunncag/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 23 Aug

    Ep. 53 We Blame Society, But We Are Society

    Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn MBE, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society. In this episode, Alison is joined by Bianca Robinson, leader of CEO Sleepout UK, the charity that asks business leaders to spend a night outdoors to raise money and attention for the frontline organisations tackling homelessness in their own towns and cities. Bianca has slept out more than a hundred times herself, and she has been saying the same thing for nine years: we blame society, but we are society. The conversation starts with a number that reframes the whole subject. Rough sleeping is the visible edge of homelessness, and it is a small part of it. Around 385,000 people in the UK are homeless, enough to fill Wembley Stadium four and a half times over, and 175,000 of them are children. Most are in temporary accommodation, on sofas, or in places that are unsafe, and they never appear in a doorway or a headline. New Prime Minister Andy Burnham has pledged to end rough sleeping. Bianca is optimistic, and she is clear about the conditions. It is achievable if Housing First is delivered at scale: a permanent home first, wraparound support for people whose needs are complex, and the agencies around them working together rather than in sequence. She points to Greater Manchester, where Housing First achieved an 85 per cent retention rate, moved 466 people into sustainable accommodation and expanded to more than 600 places, and where regional collaboration made the difference. Finland offers the longer-run evidence that the model holds. Then the barriers, and this is where the conversation turns on the rest of us. There are not enough homes. Council housing has not been replenished for decades. New building runs into NIMBYism and the uncomfortable question of the green belt. Properties sit empty or are held by investors, and the funding conversation now includes serious voices calling for a wealth tax. Alison and Bianca work through each of these without pretending any of them is simple, or that the answer belongs to someone else's postcode. Bianca also explains where homelessness actually begins, and where it can be stopped earlier: rent arrears, domestic abuse, release from prison, young people leaving care, the asylum process, mental health and addiction. She takes on the stereotypes about who ends up on the street, the myths about asylum seekers, and the role of trauma in addiction, and describes how CEO Sleepout turns a single night into sustained funding for the people doing the work on the ground. Timestamps: 00:00 Homelessness is much bigger than rough sleeping 01:03 The Prime Minister's pledge, and why Bianca is hopeful 02:46 What Housing First actually means 05:59 The 382,000 people you never see 12:19 Empty homes, investors and the tax question 15:34 Why council housing has to come back 17:52 Finland and Manchester show it works 20:05 What CEO Sleepout does with a night outdoors 25:00 Changing who we think homeless people are 29:12 Prevention, and the myths 34:31 Angela Rayner and the politics of housing 36:36 Closing thoughts Ending rough sleeping has been promised before. The difference this time, in Bianca's telling, is that the evidence already exists, some of it in Greater Manchester, about what works. What remains is the decision to build the homes, fund the support, and get the agencies in a room together. None of that is beyond the North, and none of it is someone else's problem. Host: Alison Dunn Guest: Bianca Robinson This podcast is produced by Purpose Made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  2. 2 Aug

    Ep 52. Museums as Community Centres

    Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn MBE, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society. In this episode, Alison is joined by Keith Merrin, Director of North East Museums, the organisation responsible for twelve museums across Tyneside and Northumberland, from the Hancock and the Discovery Museum to a former coal mine at Woodhorn and the Roman forts at either end of Hadrian's Wall. Keith grew up in Jarrow in the 1980s, when worklessness was as high as it had been at the time of the Jarrow March, and the town's story was one of loss. It took him years to learn that in the seventh century Jarrow had been one of the most important centres of learning in Western Europe. That gap, between the story a place is told and the story it actually owns, runs through the whole conversation. Keith describes how the job has changed. One of his duty managers, thirty years in post, puts it simply: "We're much more like community centres now." That means sessions with refugee and asylum seeker communities who arrive in the North East knowing nothing about where they've landed, memory boxes taken into care homes with staff trained to carry the work on, and the women at the Shipley Art Gallery passing on the craft of clippy mats. It also means confronting the harder history in the collections themselves, objects gathered during the British Empire whose significance to communities living in the North East today demands more thought than the Victorians ever gave it. Keith is direct about repatriation: his organisation would consider returning an object if a source community asked, and in twenty years it has happened once. The conversation gets specific about money. Most of Keith's museums are free, and free is not enough. He cites National Trust research showing members visiting less often even with entry covered, because the bus fare, the coffee and the gift shop have turned a free day out into something many families cannot afford. Alison shares her own experience of leaning on museums and libraries during the hardest years of raising her family, when free programmes were, in her words, the lifeblood of her parenting. Keith explains the poverty-proofing work with Children North East and the pay-it-forward café tokens his team quietly moves between sites so that nobody has to prove hardship to accept one. Then there is the imbalance. The national museums, most of them in London, receive the most public funding and have the greatest capacity to raise their own, while councils across England have cut culture spending to the point where many spend nothing on museums at all. Timestamps:  00:00 Why museums matter now 01:26 Jarrow, and the story it wasn't told 03:01 The Pitmen Painters 05:12 The Enigma machine and a North Shields hero 09:36 Empire, collections and repatriation 13:35 Five challenges facing the North East 20:03 A sector under pressure 23:48 The North South funding gap 31:48 What excites Keith about the future This conversation is a reminder that museums are not warehouses for the past. They are where a region keeps the evidence of what it has been and what it could be, and the barriers that keep people out of them, financial, cultural and psychological, are barriers to identity itself. Keith Merrin grew up in a town that was never told its own greatest story. His job now is making sure that stops happening. Host: Alison Dunn  Guest: Keith Merrin This podcast is produced by Purpose Made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  3. 13 Jul

    Ep 51. A Crime Nobody Is Required to Notice

    Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn MBE, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society. In this episode, Alison sits down with Ameera Jamil, founder and CEO of Recultured, who has spent her career supporting victims of forced marriage and honour-based abuse, first on the front line at Karma Nirvana and now training the professionals to recognise the signs and act on them. It is a conversation about a form of abuse that survives on silence, and about the institutions that still have nowhere to record it. Ameera is precise about what this is, and none of it is comfortable. Honour-based abuse is harm inflicted to restore a family's so-called honour, and the list of what counts as dishonourable has no end, because each family writes its own: make-up, Western clothes, who you marry, whether you marry at all. The stereotypical victim is South Asian and Muslim; the reality reaches into any culture. What victims fear most is disownment; Ameera has had people tell her they would rather be hit than cut off. And where domestic abuse is done by a partner or an ex, honour-based abuse is done by parents, siblings and a community together: a fifteen-year-old fitted for a wedding dress, examined to prove her virginity, and not one adult asking a single question. Around 3,000 honour-based crimes are reported in the UK each year, a figure practitioners describe as the tip of the iceberg. Ameera's research into universities shows why so much stays hidden. Over ninety per cent have no reporting category for honour-based abuse, forced marriage or FGM. Over sixty per cent offer no specific training. And when a student stops attending, the next of kin the university rings can be the very person who forced the marriage. This year, for the first time, honour-based abuse was given its own statutory definition in law. On 14 July, the National Day of Memory, campaigned for by Karma Nirvana, remembers everyone lost or harmed in the name of honour. It falls on the birthday of Shafilea Ahmed. She was seventeen when her parents murdered her, and her case is one this conversation returns to more than once. Survivors will speak, stories will be told, and we will remember. Timestamps: 00:00 The fear worse than violence 01:18 What honour-based abuse actually is 03:45 The tip of the iceberg 09:43 The fear of disownment 11:42 Shafilea Ahmed 17:30 Careful curiosity: the signs professionals miss 36:26 The National Day of Memory, 14 July 39:02 Closing thoughts Karma Nirvana's map of those killed in the name of honour runs from the top of Scotland to Land's End, and not one of its markers sits in a place that thought this happened there. The question this conversation leaves us with: when someone stops coming in, whose job is it to notice? This conversation is an important one. Ahead of the National Day of Memory on 14 July, give it your time, and share it with anyone who works with young people. If you or someone you know is at risk, Karma Nirvana's national helpline is 0800 5999 247. Host: Alison Dunn Guest: Ameera Jamil Resources: ReculturedKarma NirvanaThe Forced Marriage UnitPayzee Mahmod TEDx talk This podcast is produced by Purpose Made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  4. 1 Jun

    Ep. 50 The Stories That Keep Us Smoking

    Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society. In this episode, Alison sits down with Ailsa Rutter OBE, director of Fresh and Balance, the organisations that have led the North East's work on tobacco and alcohol for two decades. It is a conversation about a problem many people assume was dealt with years ago, and about how much of the harm that remains lives not in the tobacco itself, but in the stories built around it. Ailsa grew up in a house where almost everyone smoked. Her mother, her father and her grandmother were all forty a day, and one of her earliest memories is a car journey from Seahouses to Devon in the 1970s, unable to breathe and begging them to stop. By her own account she should have ended up a smoker. Instead she trained as a nurse, watched the same men return to her cardiac ward for a second bypass and then a third while still smoking, and eventually went to university in Brisbane to understand why telling someone to stop is not the same as helping them. She has spent the years since taking that question apart, work recognised with an OBE and a medal from the World Health Organisation. Her argument is precise and uncomfortable. Two in three long-term smokers are killed by what they smoke, and no consumer product has ever been invented that is guaranteed to be so lethal. The filter on a cigarette does nothing to protect you; it was built to look as though it does. Counterfeit tobacco is no more dangerous than the branded packet. Smoking does not relieve stress, it manufactures the very tension it appears to soothe. These myths do their heaviest work in the communities with the least power to take them apart, which is why smoking rates remain highest among the most deprived and those struggling with their mental health. And yet the North East has cut smoking by 62% in two decades, from the worst rate in England to very nearly the best. From the first of January next year, nobody born after the first of January 2009 will ever legally be sold tobacco, the first policy of its kind anywhere in the world. Timestamps 00:00 The problem we think we already solved 01:14 From the worst in England to nearly the best 03:29 The myth that every young person vapes 06:07 Alcohol, and the harm we don't see 11:47 The filter that protects nothing 22:24 A smoke-free generation, explained 25:44 Illicit tobacco and the people who police it 29:05 The bill the industry says it pays 33:52 What the North East can learn from elsewhere 35:42 How to help someone you love quit 37:16 Closing thoughts The question this conversation leaves us with is not whether smoking can be ended, but whether we choose to finish the job. Fresh and the region's directors of public health have named a date: 2040, a smoke-free North East. Knowing what this region has already achieved, Ailsa does not think that is naive. The people owed the truth about tobacco have always been handed the least of it. A generation born after January will grow up never being sold it at all. If you are worried about someone, or want to stop, the Fresh Quit website is a one-stop shop for stop smoking support across the North East, including stories from people who have done it. Every council in the region funds a free stop smoking service, the NHS now runs a tobacco dependency treatment service for hospital patients, and free digital support is available around the clock through the Smoke Free app. Host: Alison Dunn  Guest: Ailsa Rutter OBE Resources: Fresh Quit The Tobacco and Vapes Act Smoke Free App This podcast is produced by Purpose Made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  5. 10 May

    Ep 49. Tackling Poverty and Disadvantage in Schools

    Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society. In this episode, Alison sits down with Katrina Morley, CEO of Tees Valley Education, and Sean Harris, the trust's Director of Place. Together they have co-authored Tackling Poverty and Disadvantage in Schools, a book that refuses the comfortable myth that low income equals low aspiration and asks educators to be furiously curious about why that lie has held for so long. Katrina was born in Middlesbrough. She trained as a chemical engineer before swapping careers, much to the consternation of family and friends and she has never looked back. Sean is a Lancaster lad who came to Durham first generation, started youth work in the East and West End of the city, and stayed. The first time a child told him they were going to the toon at the weekend, he had no idea what they meant. Their argument is simple and uncomfortable. You cannot teach a child out of poverty. Educational inequality cannot be tackled by educational tools alone. Child poverty costs this country an estimated 39 billion pounds a year. We can find the money to pay for the consequences. We have not found the money to prevent them. World Book Day, packed lunch standards, school trips with souvenir shops, ballet classes that require tutus nobody told you to buy. These are not minor inconveniences but the daily architecture of exclusion. Timestamps: 00:00 The DNA of a Trust 06:42 Five Academies, One Ecosystem 07:32 What Poverty Actually Does to a Child 23:07 Beyond the Crisis Narrative 29:27 Pay It Forward 31:48 People, Place, Policy 34:59 Expanded Free School Meals and Dignity 37:10 What Gives Them Hope The question we're left with is what does it actually take to give a child in the North East dignity, opportunity, and agency, and who is doing it already. A child cannot wait for policy to catch up. Host: Alison Dunn Guests: Katrina Morley + Sean Harris This podcast is produced by Purpose Made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  6. 26 Apr

    Ep 48. Fatherhood in the Neonatal Unit

    Welcome to the 'This Is The North' Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn. In this episode, Alison is joined by Andrew Dunsmure, Chair of the Board of Trustees at Tiny Lives Trust, about his personal experience becoming a father at 28 weeks during COVID, when his newborn son was taken into neonatal intensive care with a brain bleed, uncertain survival, and later long-term disabilities. Andrew describes dissociation, the clinical language of early prognosis, and how he was separated from his wife and son for long periods, leaving both parents with very different and isolating experiences. A later diagnosis of 22q deletion syndrome followed months of uncertainty and multiple medical issues, including a heart operation. Andrew details the wide-ranging impacts of the condition, developmental delays, growth and feeding issues, anxiety, and potential future mental health risks, and shares the pressure to become an expert in his child's care, the "cliff edge" many families feel after discharge, and the emotional load fathers often carry while trying to hold their family together. He recounts a breakdown in his son's second year, reflecting on the lack of spaces for fathers to speak openly, and discusses how he has relied on the gym and meditation while also making difficult decisions about boundaries with family and friends. The conversation explores grief alongside love and joy, celebrating small milestones, and his son's personality and interests, including a love of dinosaurs and learning to walk again after foot surgery. Andrew argues that dads need to talk more, sharing examples of men staying silent for decades, and redefines resilience as allowing yourself to fall apart and recover. He explains how his lived experience led him to Tiny Lives Trust, first as a trustee and then as chair, and outlines the charity's support for families at the RVI neonatal unit, including psychological and physiotherapy support, family groups, and a dads' peer support group. He closes with advice to be kind to yourself, accept that it's okay to fall apart, and embrace honest, realistic support rather than "toxic positivity." Timestamps: 00:00 A dad's silent trauma 01:48 Emergency birth at 28 weeks 03:02 Clinical language, survival talk, and dissociation 04:09 ICU, brain bleed, and uncertainty 05:11 Coming home and the cliff edge 05:51 22q deletion syndrome 07:35 Becoming the expert 09:44 The crash in year two 11:37 Finding support and living with grief 14:08 Celebrating millimetres, not milestones 15:57 Why dads need to talk more 17:33 Turning pain into purpose 19:37 What Tiny Lives offers families 21:59 Kindness, realism, and toxic positivity 26:47 How to get support or get involved This conversation is one of the most honest things we've published. Andrew doesn't perform strength, he describes what it actually costs, and why the silence around fathers in these situations helps nobody. If this reaches one dad who's holding it all together and falling apart at the same time, we hope it reminds you that you don't have to do it alone. Host: Alison Dunn  Guest: Andrew Dunsmure This podcast is produced by Purpose Made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  7. 6 Apr

    Ep. 47 Claire Malcolm MBE

    Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn. In this episode, Alison is joined by Claire Malcolm MBE, founding Chief Executive of New Writing North, the organisation she built from a small startup in 1996 into a nationally recognised force shaping opportunities for writers across the north of England. Claire grew up working class in York, a passionate reader placed in low sets for English because she was a bad speller. Nobody in her family had been to university. She ended up doing a fine art degree because the system had already decided English wasn't for her. In 1996, when everyone she knew in Leeds was heading to London, she went to Newcastle instead, and decided to put it on the map. For the first twenty years, New Writing North was about building bridges to London, helping northern writers access the agents, publishers, and deals concentrated in the capital. It worked. But Claire reached a point where she started asking a different question: we are supplying London with brilliant writers, so where is the investment coming back? The conversation turns to the reading crisis. Only one in five schools in the North East has a school library. Book ownership among children is lower than the national average. Claire makes the case that books were, for her, "the steps out of the place I was from," and that when you strip away the library, the books in the home, and the teacher who takes you seriously, you close the door to everything that comes after. Claire has now raised £10.5 million to build a Centre for Writing in Newcastle, backed by the public sector, Northumbria University, and the combined authority. Hachette UK, the second biggest publisher in the country, has opened a Newcastle office with 20 staff and together they have launched an MA in publishing. The Centre is due to open in early 2028. The episode also covers the working-class voices magazine The Bee, youth and community programmes in Newcastle's West End, regional screenwriting, AI and copyright, and what Claire is reading. Timestamps: 00:00 The reading crisis 01:20 Growing up working class in York 04:31 Reading, wellbeing, and empathy 05:29 Why children lack access to books 07:54 Libraries, loneliness, and connection 09:31 Building bridges to London 11:03 The Centre for Writing in Newcastle 12:14 Regional voices on the global stage 16:52 Working-class voices and The Bee 18:29 The Northern Writers Awards 20:22 Skills programmes in libraries 21:31 Youth partnerships and Excelsior Academy 25:54 Screenwriting in the North East  28:39 The Booker Prize and what Claire is reading 37:49 Legacy and the Centre for Writing This conversation is a reminder that who gets taken seriously as a writer, a reader, or a person with something to say is still shaped by class, geography, and access. Claire Malcolm has spent nearly thirty years proving that the talent was always here. Now she is building the infrastructure to match it. Host: Alison Dunn Guest: Claire Malcolm MBE This podcast is produced by Purpose Made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  8. 16 Mar

    Ep 46. "If I'd Known That, It Would've Affected My Vote"

    Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn. In this episode, Alison is joined by Sarah Breeden, Deputy Governor for Financial Stability at the Bank of England and member of the Monetary Policy Committee. Sarah grew up in Stockport, went to the local comprehensive, and has spent the last 34 years at the Bank. She describes her childhood as "bog standard, northern, normal", and her journey from putting parsley on airline meals at Manchester Airport to becoming one of six people in the Bank's senior leadership team. Sarah reflects on the work ethic instilled by her parents, both local government workers, and the commitment to public service that has driven her career: "Not for money. Because it makes a difference." She describes what it was like to be on the phone to Northern Rock directors as the queues formed outside, the reforms that followed the financial crisis, and why a resilient banking system matters not for the banks themselves but for the businesses and households that depend on them. As a member of the MPC, Sarah explains how interest rate decisions are made, not based on where inflation is today, but where it will be in two years, and why the Bank spends weeks each year visiting businesses around the country, from Cardiff to Newcastle, gathering on-the-ground intelligence on sales, wages, hiring and prices. The MPC announces its latest decision on Thursday and Sarah is one of the people making it. She discusses why food inflation hits harder than any other kind, how global commodity shocks, wage costs and packaging regulations are driving prices up, and why deflation (not just inflation) is something western economies guard against. The conversation turns to economic literacy and who gets access to it. Sarah describes citizens' panels where, after a single conversation about how the economy works, one woman said: "If I'd known that, that would've affected my vote." With only 1% of economics degree students coming from the North East, Sarah makes the case for the Bank's expansion into Leeds and its regional presence in Newcastle, not just to access talent, but to hear the voices that should be shaping policy. Sarah also discusses the progression of women in the Bank's leadership, having founded its women's network in 2007 and co-chaired it for eight years. The senior team is now 50/50, but she is candid that the layer below is not bringing women through at the rate she had hoped. The episode also covers digital money and stablecoins versus Bitcoin, and why cyber risk is now the thing that keeps her most awake at night. Timestamps: 00:00 Why stability matters 01:20 Stockport roots and a "bog standard" childhood 03:47 Finding economics 05:17 Airline meals, pubs, and the Protestant work ethic 07:06 Joining the Bank of England 10:50 Fixing the system after the financial crisis 13:20 How interest rates are set 15:43 What businesses are saying now 18:08 A small open economy in a volatile world 19:24 Four pints of milk: food prices explained 23:45 "If I'd known that, it would've affected my vote" 26:59 Women in economics and the Bank's leadership 31:24 Digital money demystified 35:58 Cyber risk rising 37:50 Building the Bank beyond London 39:50 What still drives her after 34 years This conversation is a reminder that the decisions made at the Bank of England affect every household in the country, and that who understands economics, who gets taught it, and who is in the room when those decisions are made are not separate questions. Sarah Breeden is proof that a girl from a Stockport comprehensive can end up setting interest rates. The question is why, given the pipeline, she still largely remains an outlier. Host: Alison Dunn  Guest: Sarah Breeden This podcast is produced by Purpose Made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The North has a rich history of world-changing industry, invention and social progress. It is also home to persistent inequalities in opportunity, wealth and health. So what happened? What can we learn from the past, what is changing now, and what would it take to build a stronger future for the North? This Is The North explores the evidence behind those questions. Hosted by Alison Dunn MBE, charity chief executive and social justice advocate, the podcast brings together academics, business leaders, community voices and charity leaders to understand the forces shaping the region and the choices available to us. We explore the North’s green energy and industrial transition, housing and affordability, jobs and skills, and the people, industries and ideas that can help shape its future. We ask what the evidence tells us, who is affected, what is already working, and what needs to change. This Is The North comes from the North, is about the North, and believes the region should help define its own future. This Is The North: Evidence and ideas for a stronger North. Connect with Alison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisondunncag/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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