Sunderland Echo and National Glass Centre present the final exhibition in a series describing the people, events, passions and sorrows of life in Sunderland over the past 70 years. World Cup fever will grip the city this year, and so we celebrate Sunderland AFC, its fans, its home and its stars!
This exhibition features photographic prints and digital slideshows put together from the Sunderland Echo archives, capturing moments from the club’s eventful football history. Included, is a team photograph from the very early days at Roker Park; the Wembley lap of honour after winning the FA Cup in 1937, and again in 1973, and the turf being lifted after the last match at Roker Park, to be taken to the new ground, the Stadium of Light, in 1997.
Copies of prints from the exhibition are available to buy from Sunderland Echo, download details here.
Black Cats Forever is part of a programme of exhibitions curated by National Glass Centre looking at the history, future and community of Sunderland.
Further information
The Sunderland Echo is an evening newspaper serving the Sunderland, South Tyneside and East Durham areas of North East England. The newspaper was founded in 1873, as the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, and designed to provide a platform for the radical views held by its founders Samuel Storey and his partners. It was also Sunderland's first local daily paper.
The inaugural edition of the Echo was printed in Press Lane, Sunderland on 22 December 1873; 1,000 copies were produced and sold for a halfpenny each. The Echo survived intense competition in its early years, as well as the depression of the 1930s and two World Wars. Sunderland was heavily bombed in the Second World War and, although the Echo building was undamaged, it was forced to print its competitor's paper under wartime rules. It was during this time that the paper's format changed, from a broadsheet to its current tabloid layout, because of national newsprint shortages.
The Echo is published Monday–Saturday at Echo House, Pennywell Industrial Estate, Sunderland by Northeast Press and is part of the Johnston Press group—one of the United Kingdom's largest publishers of local and regional newspapers. As of July 2008, the paper had an average daily circulation in excess of 40,000, with over 100,000 readers, and a very active website.
Partners
- Arts Council England
- Sunderland City Council
- University of Sunderland
- Positive About Disabled People
- Lottery Funded
- Northern Rock Foundation
- VAQUAS
