'People think it's just parmos. There's much more'

A town hit by riots last summer is shining a light on its community in an effort to "strip away people's preconceptions".

Hundreds of people confronted police during protests in Middlesbrough in August, with more than £750,000 of damage estimated to have been caused.

It was one of a number of violent outbreaks across parts of England in the wake of the murders of three girls in Southport.

This week, a series of free tours are being held, focusing on the area around Linthorpe Road where the disorder began, which feature audio recordings of several residents who have shared their memories of the town.

Organiser Robert Nichols said the one-hour tours, which are part of Middlesbrough Local History Month, were a chance to "amaze and inspire".

"We want to show people the streets where the riots happened and strip away any preconceptions they have, to show them the streets through other people's eyes," he said.

"The healing started the very next day when the community came out to clean up the streets."

Mr Nichols said many people did not know a lot about the town's history.

"It's all about sharing our heritage with new facts to learn and stories to amaze and inspire," he said.

"I wanted to talk about the people who have come into the town as there are so many.

"It was founded in 1830. Everybody came for industry. Before that, it was just a farm."

The tour also includes Ayresome Gardens, which sits on top of what was Old Linthorpe Road Cemetery - home to 11,000 graves including 5,000 belonging to children.

Khadim Hussain is another of those to have recorded his memories of life in the town over the past 50 or so years.

He moved to Middlesbrough in 1975 having initially relocated to Bradford when his family left Pakistan eight years earlier.

After several years working at one of ICI's local chemical plants as a research assistant, Mr Hussain and several family members opened a curry house on Linthorpe Road in 1990.

He later published a book about curries in 2006 and began compiling poetry after taking a creative writing course at Teesside University.

"I came here in summer 1975 and have been here ever since," he said.

"Even though people here might be a different skin colour or religion, we share a culture.

"Middlesbrough is a friendly town. We know everyone and we're all part of a family even if we have different interests."

Dominic Nelson-Ashley came to Middlesbrough from London in 1995 to take up a job as a careers advisor.

He later founded a social enterprise to help disadvantaged people gain work skills via creative arts and then launched a record label.

He said he was shocked by last summer's riots and believes Middlesbrough and the wider North East have much to offer.

"That was not a true reflection of what I know this area is. It's one of the country's best-kept secrets," he said.

"Everything you could possibly want is in this area if you care to look for it."

He highlighted how easy it was to access the seaside in nearby Saltburn and the countryside in Osmotherley, on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors.

"If you walk down Linthorpe Road, you can experience all the cultures of the world on one high street. That's fantastic," he said.

"People from outside Middlesbrough might say, 'Oh, that's the place with parmos', but there's so much more."

The tours are free and start at 14:00 BST from the Dorman Museum, but people are asked to book a place.

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