The Coal Town Collection

The Coal Town Collection presents photographs made by social documentary photographer Mik Critchlow (1955–2023). Mik documented his home town and community of Ashington over a 45-year period and personally selected these photographs for display at Woodhorn Museum. 

Mik began this extraordinary long term photography project in 1977, after seeing an exhibition by the Ashington Group of artists. 

"They recorded their lives with such honesty, painting the ordinary, the mundane, the everyday and put it all down on paper, on canvas, on hardboard. They showed me that ordinary people's lives could be important and could be seen as art." - Mik Critchlow. 

Mik's work captures the end of the coal mining industry in Ashington and the immediate and longer term impacts of the loss of industry on the town's people, places and community. Mik described making photographs as an 'act of remembrance' and his work provides a poignant record of ordinary people and places across a time of major, social, political, economic and environmental change. 

"After all these many years, I feel that I'm bringing these people back to life again, back home where they all belong." - Mik Critchlow, 2021. 

The Mik Critchlow Coal Town Collection has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Mik Critchlow's family, and through funding from Northumberland County Council and Arts Council England.