Side: Documents of Working Class Life
Side is a lens-based documentary organisation rooted in the North East of England. We show the realities of everyday experience through photography and film, and we support artists and communities who work from lived experience. We carry this practice into physical and digital spaces through partnerships across our region, nationally, and internationally.
Since 1977, Side has focused on documentary that is grounded, accountable and shaped with the people it speaks about.
We also care for the AmberSide Collection – a UNESCO-recognised body of work made with and about working-class communities in the North East and beyond – and keep it alive through exhibitions, projects, education and community programmes that challenge how communities are seen, remembered and understood.
MySide
Show us your side of life
We’re inviting you to share your life and community through documentary photography as part of MySide, and right now we’re looking for responses to the prompt “On the Move.”
We want to see how people move through the places around them. That might mean daily journeys to work or school, travelling by bus, bike or on foot, but also physical work, care, play and the repeated movements that shape everyday life.
We’re interested in what movement can tell us about people and place. Roads, paths, public transport, open land, fences and buildings can make movement easier, harder or more inventive. Show us the physical force of movement and how people navigate, adapt to and make use of the world around them.
What's on
50x50: Fundraising Print Sale
50 artists | Editions of 50 | £50 Each
Events
Side Online
Planned Space Lived Place
Northern New Towns & Planned Communities
Exhibitions
Farrell Centre, Newcastle
Made Together
Amber Films & The Workshop Movement
Exhibitions
Tyneside Cinema
Summer of Discovery: Heritage on Screen
a season of screenings
Cinema
The Common Room, Newcastle upon Tyne
Explore more at Side
Support Side
When you donate to Side, you help us keep documentary practice alive where it matters most. Your support strengthens our exhibitions, projects and education work across the North East, and allows us to work with artists, young people and communities who use photography and film to explore their own stories.
It gives us the stability to build work that is collaborative, accountable and rooted in real lives.
Donations also underpin our care of the AmberSide Collection, keeping it accessible, active and embedded across our programmes. Your support helps us grow new display partnerships for this work, expand learning opportunities and ensure working-class experience remains central to how documentary culture is made and understood today.
All donations go to the AmberSide Trust (registered charity number: 1160760).
Beyond the frame
Explore the people and stories behind our work
News, Photo Essay
In Focus
News
In Focus, Photo Essay
Photo Essay, In Focus