Inside the documentary that captures a coastal town’s grit, ghosts and growing creative firepower.
North Shields doesn’t whisper its history — it hums it. Low, steady, lived-in. A town shaped by shipyards, cold river mornings, and the kind of working-class resilience you don’t learn, you inherit.
So when filmmaker Dan Alecks (XL Creative Media) set out to mark the town’s 800th anniversary, he didn’t go for a history lecture. He made something far more honest:
a music documentary that sounds exactly like the place it comes from.
“800 Years – Here We Are” isn’t polished. It isn’t tidy. It isn’t trying to be.
It’s Shields — raw, melodic, stubborn, hopeful — captured as the tide turns and a new creative identity starts to take shape.
The Heartbeat: Liam Fender
If this film has a centre of gravity, it’s Liam Fender — a songwriter who carries the same emotional weight his hometown does. Fender doesn’t posture or play the frontman. He talks like a lad who grew up in back lanes, in rehearsal rooms, in pubs that doubled as church and community hall.
In an earlier conversation with I Love North Shields, he summed it up perfectly:
“I’m just Liam from Shields.”
That’s not modesty. That’s the thesis of the entire film.
His new track “Here We Are,” written specifically for the documentary, lands with that familiar Fender ache — soft-edged, wounded, proud. It officially drops Friday 28 November, and it’s very likely going to become the emotional anchor for anyone who calls NE29 home.
A Cast of Artists Who Aren’t Pretending
The film brings together a lineup that reads like a who’s-who of North Shields’ sonic identity:
- Ray Laidlaw of Lindisfarne – the lineage, the heritage
- Hector Gannet – the folk-storyteller with seawater in his veins
- DJ Schak – the breakout name rewriting what “a Shields artist” can sound like
- Man Power – the electronic shape-shifter with North Sea melancholy in every beat
These artists don’t speak in soundbites. They speak like people who know exactly who built this town and why its music has always been its pressure valve.
A Town That Makes Its Own Music
North Shields doesn’t have a “scene” — it has a pulse.
The documentary doesn’t drown you in nostalgia. It shows the truth:
Music here didn’t start in clubs or studios. It started in houses where your dad worked shifts. In pubs where everyone’s voice is three pints deep.
A Premiere That Felt Like a Homecoming
The first screening at The Exchange 1856 didn’t feel like a film premiere. It felt like the town turning up to finally hear its own voice played back with volume.
The room was packed, loud, emotional. When Fender performed, you could feel the floorboards working overtime. One local reviewer described his live sets as:
“A palpable release of energy.”
That same release runs through the documentary — the sense of a town exhaling after carrying centuries of history on its shoulders.
A Creative Shift You Can’t Ignore
The most compelling thread of “800 Years – Here We Are” is what sits beneath the interviews:
North Shields is no longer waiting for Newcastle’s approval.
Its artists aren’t “emerging.” They’ve emerged.
Its venues aren’t warming up. They’re ready.
Its audience isn’t passive. They’re proud — and loud about it.
This documentary lands right at the moment the town starts to realise it’s building something new:
a creative identity that belongs entirely to itself.
Why This Film Matters
Because it’s honest.
Because it’s rooted.
Because it captures the exact moment a town with grit in its DNA starts to recognise its cultural worth.
And because it shows North Shields not as a footnote, but as a place with its own sound — shaped by heritage, heartbreak, humour and defiance.
Supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and NECA, it stands as the most emotionally accurate piece of the NS800 programme.
Watch the Documentary
🎬 “800 Years – Here We Are”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxLjzul7Z_M
The Last Word
Great music documentaries do one thing:
they tell the truth about a place.
This one tells the truth about North Shields — a town that’s tough, tender, creative, chaotic, and absolutely full of soul.
Here we are, indeed.
And if this film is anything to go by… here we go next.
