Join North Shield's Library for an all day screening of Still Here (Amber Films, 2018), showing on a continuous loop at North Shields Community Hub and Library. Drop in at any point, stay for as long as you like, and spend time with the film at your own pace. Tea and coffee will be available throughout the day.

Made in 2018, Still Here revisits four people from Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s earlier projects, looking at how their lives have changed over time and what it means to encounter those earlier images and films decades later. Among them are women who appeared in Step by Step and Keeping Time, now watching themselves back as teenagers in dance classes in North Shields.

Alongside the screening, visitors will also be able to find out more about and support a Kickstarter by Dewi Lewis Publishing for a new extended book edition of Step by Step. First published in 1989, the book has been extensively revised by Sirkka and will be newly printed in tritone to give the photographs far greater depth and quality than the original edition.

Step by Step (1982–1989) is Sirkka’s long-term study of girls and their mothers at a dancing school in North Shields, following them over six years as dancing, ambition, family life and the pressures facing women begin to shape the futures ahead of them. The work later informed the development and writing of Lee Hall’s Dancer, which became the film Billy Elliot.

The Kickstarter is being shared here in support of the book and Sirkka’s work. Side is not running this fundraiser and receives no money from it.