The remarkable Wilf Franks

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Middlesbrough lad Dan Gilgan has put together a short video about his grandfather - the remarkable Wilf Franks. Tales that were told to Dan in the Linny Hotel and he has built on extensive research to write a biography of a man that trained at the famous Bauhaus in Germany but his training was interrupted by the Nazis taking over. Franks went to Boosbeck to help the miners, where unemployment was 90% - he worked with Michael Tippett on musical and stage productions including the very first opera of the great composer Tippett's career. In Boosbeck!
Franks was also a skilled dancer and set designer on the first BBC broadcasts at Ally Pally. But he was a political radical arrested on the front line facing the fascist of Oswald Mosley.
Artists, dancer, designer, teacher, activist Franks lived many of his later years in Stokesley and Linthorpe - sometimes talking to students at the nearby art college. There is much, much more besides, including a lost daughter and a bisexual love affair with one of the greatest composers in 20th century Britain. Please enjoy this short video talk for Local History Month on Discover Middlesbrough facebook.
WILF FRANKS
 
You may well have been put today and missed this video talk by Boro fan Dan Gilgan about his grandfather Wilf Frank's who lived a truly incredible life.
And he brought so many of his people and artistry skills to help the mining community of Boosbeck devastated by 90% unemployment between the wars. He started furniture making after helping stage an opera in the village hall.
Wilf had been a drinking mate of Dylan Thomas, he knew major 20th century artists and music composers, was wrongly arrested at Cable Street and was a TV pioneer. He was a dancer, a set designer, a gifted artist and totally committed to his beliefs.
And in the 90s you might have been lucky enough to have bumped into him with Dan in the Linny. Just next to where he lived.
 
He was our art teacher at Yarm School in the early '80s.

I remember when I first saw him, he looked like Dracula, dressed in black, hair greased back and with a stern look.

But in reality he was one of the kindest most gentle blokes I've ever met.

He didn't really care about the ethos of 'school' - he gave everyone marks of 100% - all he cared about was teaching art, for fun.

Lots of kids took the ****. It was really sad.
 
He did but his education at the Bauhaus was curtailed when the Nazi's won the local election and took over the "degenerative" art school and replaced the director and direction for a more traditionally and racially pure approach. As mentioned in the film.
 
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