Our Side: A Documentary Toolkit invites our visitors to explore how documentary photography can help us understand the place we live in and the lives we lead.

The exhibition brings together highlights from the AmberSide collection. These photographs reflect decades of life in the North East, focusing on work, family, community and place. They show shipyards and streets, dinner tables and demonstrations, celebrations, everyday routines and moments of change. The images are a record of how people have lived, what they have built, and what they have held on to.

Visitors are encouraged to respond to the photographs, asking: What feels familiar? What has changed? What would you add?

Through simple prompts and questions, people can share with us their own knowledge of the city, their memories, and their thoughts about how these images connect to life today.

These responses will help shape a new community resource. The toolkit will be a collection of ideas, reflections and techniques for people who want to tell their own stories through images, words or experience. It will grow from the conversations that happen during the exhibition to empower the next generation of documentary photographers to tell real stories from their communities.

Our Side is about looking at where we are, how we got here, and how we might tell those stories ourselves.

A curatorial tour of both the MySide and Our Side exhibitions will take place on Saturday 23rd August at 4pm. No booking required.