Keep Documentary Accessible: Donate and Support Side

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.

Explore the AmberSide Collection
Appleby Horse Fair, 1969/1970 © Estate of Dave Thomas

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.

Visit MySide

What's on

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).

Donate now

Beyond the frame

Explore the people and stories behind our work

The Pahalwans Who Stayed

The Pahalwans Who Stayed

July 16th, 2026

Ellen Stone

In Focus

Visual artist and photographer Monica Dhaka on India’s mud wrestling, social and personal heritage, soil, and the body.
Relocating Amber

Relocating Amber

July 15th, 2026

AmberSide Trust

News

Announcement of a National Lottery Heritage Fund-supported partnership with Newcastle University Special Collections to safeguard the AmberSide Collection and expand public access.
The Hoppings from Above

The Hoppings from Above

July 6th, 2026

Richard Simpson

In Focus, Photo Essay

Photographer Richard Simpson shares his experience experimenting using a drone to capture the iconic Hoppings funfair from the sky.
MySide: Coastal Colour

MySide: Coastal Colour

May 6th, 2026

MySide

Photo Essay

From Staithes to Porthcawl, discover responses to "MySide: Local Colour" that look at the coast in colour.