Amber came together as a film & photography collective in 1968. Its work initially focused only on documenting working class and marginalised lives and landscapes in North East England, but in 1977 it opened Side Gallery, which is committed to celebrating the best in the wider tradition of humanist documentary photography.

Side Cinema is an intimate 51-seat space, opened in 1979 by the Amber Collective as a ‘debate cinema’ – a place for rigorous discussion and the opportunity to experience film collectively.

The AmberSide Collection grows out of the work the collective produces, supports and collects: Over 20,000 photographs, 100 films, 10,000 slides; a unique network of 400 stories. In 2011 the collective’s films and member Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s photographs were inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World register as ‘of outstanding national value and importance to the United Kingdom’.

The AmberSide Trust was set up in 2015 to secure the collection and support the work.

Note that the gallery is temporarily closed.