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Side: Documents of Working-Class Life

Side is a cultural hub located on Newcastle's historic Quayside, home to the internationally recognised Side Gallery, Side Cinema, and the AmberSide collection - a UNESCO-registered photographic collection and archive documenting working-class life in the North East of England and beyond.

Founded in 1977, Side represents a dynamic intersection of art, activism, and community, dedicated to recording and preserving the experiences of working-class people around the world through artist-led humanist documentary photography and film.

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Interiors: Home of Mrs. Hill, New Borough Road, North Shields, May 1981 ©Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

MySide

Show us your side of life

We’re inviting you to share your life and community through documentary photography as part of MySide, our new grassroots curatorial project. Every three months we’ll set a new theme, and right now we're looking for responses to the prompt “Places That Made Us”. This theme is all about you and your environment - the landscapes, neighbourhoods, buildings or natural spaces that have helped to form who you are and explain where you’re from.

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What's on

Explore more at Side

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Every donation, no matter how small, will make a huge difference in helping us continue our mission to share stories that matter from the North East and beyond.

Your donations to the SaveSide campaign enabled us to raise major development funding to help build a more stable future for Side as an arts organisation.

All fundraising goes to the AmberSide Trust (registered charity number: 1160760) to help fund Side’s ongoing community work, finance the continued care of the UNESCO-registered AmberSide Collection, enable future exhibitions and partnerships, and guarantee continued public access to documentary photography in the North East.

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Beyond the frame

Explore the people and stories behind our work

MySide: Phyllis Christopher

MySide: Phyllis Christopher

August 14th, 2025

MySide

Interview

We spoke with Phyllis Christopher to reflect on the politics of visibility, the trust at the heart of her practice and why photographing our communities with care and intention matters more than ever.
MySide: Hazel Plater

MySide: Hazel Plater

August 4th, 2025

MySide

Interview

We asked Newcastle based photographer Hazel Plater to give us some behind-the-scenes access and stories from four of her most recent projects.
MySide: Daragh Drake

MySide: Daragh Drake

June 17th, 2025

MySide

Interview

Read our interview with photographer Daragh Drake as we deep dive into their MySide submission: documenting the Gaelic Games.
Fathers In Focus

Fathers In Focus

June 14th, 2025

Ellen Stone

In Focus

This Father's Day we take a closer look at Peter Fryer's complex and intimate project "Fathers", 1998-2000.