Beyond Coal 

"Stronger Seams: Beyond Coal" is a multi-site art exhibition of work by East Durham Artists' Network (EDAN) on show at the EDAN Gallery Seaham (April 28th - June 6th, 2026), Washington Arts Centre (June 18th - July 25th) and Beamish Open Air Museum (dates tbc).

The exhibition is inspired by the Durham Miners' Association’s adage: “The Past We Inherit the Future We Build”. It explores the significance of green energy as a replacement for fossil fuels. Via engagement with Durham Energy Institute, preparations for the exhibition were sponsored by the GEMS project (Geothermal Energy from Mines and Solar Geothermal Heat), whose social scientists probed local people’s understandings and responses to the post-coal era. 

Pursuing these questions with EDAN led to conversations about the possibilities and limits of ‘green’ technologies compared to current developments in the former north-east coalfield alongside connections to global concerns about the next generation of energy production. Most particularly, the artists became interested in plans to use mine waste water to heat new housing development, which resulted in visits to a plant at Dawdon where plans are readied to use mine waste water to heat a new housing development. Do such initiatives bring prosperity to East Durham?

Just as mining created particular forms of social, cultural and environmental relations, so the new technologies have implications for how we embrace those legacies. Coal entailed more than mere energy extraction. It produced ways of life and cultural meanings that remain relevant, even if distorted by the loss of the pits. The exhibition considers the significance of this inheritance and suggests that real prosperity - beyond finance and electricity generation alone - involves paying attention to the wider meaning of ‘energy’ as the source of all life, natural as well as constructed.

On June 6 the exhibition will relocate to Washington Arts Centre and there are plans for transferring to Beamish Museum.