Welcome to a small start for a much bigger ongoing project from The Writing Squad.

A start of a start, a whistle for a journey, the beginning of an exploration of the lines that we travel all the time, lines that connect the patch The Writing Squad covers, from Cheshire to Northumberland and from Cumbria to South Yorkshire, from Liverpool to Hull, from Newcastle to Sheffield and Manchester and all cities, towns, villages, hamlets and huts in between.

Touch the Line is the first project in The Northernpower’ouse, an affectionate take on the renaming of what we have always known the North to be and a gentle reminder that being a real power house takes more than a few headline initiatives.

We love our cities, but know that the industrial revolution relied as much on the fields, water courses, minerals and human resources of the rural north as it did on the great conurbations. If the new Northernpower’ouse is concentrated on big buildings in one or two cities then it is nothing better than a southern centralist mentality exported north.

Like the Hannah Festival for whom we made this start, we believe revolutions are made by lots of small dispersed acts working in collaboration. The Northern Power’ouse is our ‘ouse, and these northern lines are the way we move from one essential room to another.