Amber Education Update: From Shipyards to Roman Forts
October 4th, 2026 | Amber Educaton
This month, Amber Education has been working with New York Primary School in North Tyneside on two projects that take very different periods of local history as their starting points: shipbuilding on the Tyne and the Roman North.
With Year 3 pupils, we have been using material from the AmberSide Collection to explore the history of shipbuilding, including Amber Films’ short documentary “Launch” (1974). The session was developed with teachers and begins without telling the children exactly what they are looking at. Divided into five groups, pupils receive mystery envelopes containing two stills from the film. They have five minutes to look closely, discuss what they can see and record what they think might be happening. The envelopes then move around the room until everyone has encountered the full set of images.
Only then do we screen the film.
"I have been delivering this workshop to multiple year groups in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 for over a decade. The initial development with teachers was invaluable in understanding how we could engage such young audiences with a historic observational documentary whose form and mode of address are completely different from the media they encounter today.
The close attention pupils give to the still images carries into the screening as they wait for the eureka moment when a mystery photograph appears in the moving image. That’s when the gasps start and fingers point as they discover that Wallsend is not Hollywood, World Unicorn was not the Titanic, Princess Anne isn’t Queen Victoria, and the glass bottle exploding against the ship’s hull doesn’t contain paint, yoghurt, milk or bird poo!"
That process of looking, questioning and making connections is central to Amber Education. Rather than beginning by giving pupils the answers, the workshop asks them to investigate the material themselves. Launch then opens up a much bigger history. For children growing up close to the Tyne today, there can be genuine surprise in discovering that enormous vessels such as the supertanker World Unicorn were built and launched within living memory just a few miles from their school.
The next session brought that history into the classroom through people who had experienced it. Pupils met local residents with connections to the shipyards, including former shipyard workers in their eighties who had helped to build World Unicorn itself.
The children prepared their own questions about the film and explored more shipbuilding material from the AmberSide Collection, including photographs by Bruce Rae and Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. Again, the session was built around conversation rather than a lecture. Our visitors were spread across five tables, with small groups of pupils moving between them to ask questions, look at photographs and hear directly about work and life in the yards.
"It is one of my favourite parts of the work to see these community sessions in action. Teachers are always impressed by the level of interaction and learning that takes place in what can seem like a very informal setting.
There are few people better placed to answer questions about work held in our collection than the people, families and communities represented within it. We continue to receive extraordinary support from community volunteers, in this case residents and former shipyard workers from Wallsend, who give their time to share their knowledge with a younger generation. It tells us something about the value they place both on that history and on having the opportunity to pass it on."
At New York Primary we have also begun developing a very different project with Year 4 pupils, working in partnership with Vindolanda and Arbeia Roman Fort.
Next spring, pupils will use photography to document both Roman sites after building their knowledge of archaeology and the history of the Roman North in the classroom. Photography will become part of how they investigate and record the sites, rather than simply a record of the visit.
The project will also introduce pupils to the people involved in looking after and continuing to learn from these places. Volunteers play an enormous role in excavation, research, interpretation and the care of archaeological sites, and the children will make portraits of some of the people who give their time to that work.
This month has been about laying the groundwork with teachers and our partners at Vindolanda and Arbeia, bringing resources from both sites into the curriculum and beginning to connect their histories.
Keep an eye on the Side newsletter for updates as our projects develop.