Since 1977, Side gallery has held a singular position in the British art scene, exhibiting stories of working-class life through the lens of many of the greats of documentary photography and film, alongside projects made or commissioned by its founding collective. Now it has been announced that the storied gallery space will never reopen again at its historic warehouse location near Newcastle’s riverside waterfront, having been forced to close in 2023 following the loss of vital revenue funding from the Arts Council of England (ACE).
“After consultation and expert guidance from across the arts and heritage sector, from December 2025, Side will no longer be a solely gallery-based model and will not be reopening our Quayside location,” says a statement from Laura Laffler, managing director of Amber Film & Photography, which took over the day-to-day running of the gallery after the remaining members of the Amber Side collective retired nearly a decade ago.
Laffler tells The Art Newspaper that she and her small team had been working towards reopening, having received grants and support to keep going in the interim. However, by July, it became obvious that all avenues for continued revenue funding had been exhausted, and they had to refocus in order to save Side’s legacy and its world-important archive and collection.
The announcement was met with messages of support, but also some criticism from a number of the 1,933 people who had supported its #SaveSide crowdfund in 2023, which raised £67,278 to help stay afloat. A contributor commented on Instagram: “I donated money under the assumption that it was for The Side to remain and continue in its current location. That is what was implied. The whole thing feels… disingenuous.”
Laffler says that the fundraiser was a lifesaver, allowing it to keep going during a period of soaring energy costs while it applied for new funding. There have been updates to supporters, she says, but many people opted out of being contacted when they gave donations.
“We wrote a large grant application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for £1.3 million. We heard in December 2024 that it had been turned down. The feedback was that they didn’t necessarily see a future in medium-sized independent venues and were more interested in us developing partnerships and a new business model. They advised us to apply for a Transformation Year instead. We sent out an update in March 2024 saying we’d been unsuccessful but were continuing to work towards other funding.”
Meanwhile, Side secured other grants, including £50,000 from ACE’s Unlocking Collections fund, and money from its Archives Revealed programme for cataloguing the collection. “When the big bid failed, those grants were moved into the Transforming Amber programme. None of that funding was ever for reopening the gallery. We were still actively working to reopen the gallery until July 2025. Everything hinged on the Arts Council NPO [National Portfolio Organisation] round.”
It was a perfect storm for Side, with the soaring cost of living accentuating the squeeze on funding and a further delay on the next NPO funding round until 2028. Then, in July, ACE’s Grantium funding platform collapsed leaving Side and many other arts organisations and freelancers in limbo, unable to apply for rolling project funding. It was the coup de grâce for an organisation that has faced many hurdles over the years; briefly closing in 1991, after losing nearly all its funding from Northern Arts, and losing its NPO status in 2011 before regaining it in 2018.
“We’ve been funding place first, then programming, then people — and that’s backwards. Most of our money was going into rent, utilities, and a building we [no longer] own. It wasn’t going to photographers or audiences… In the 1990s, when funding was lost, the people running Side owned the building. They didn’t pay rent and they didn’t pay themselves. That’s not possible now,” says Laffler.
“We’re an employer. I’ve gone part-time while working full-time, but I won’t ask the staff to do that…. The choice was either to close completely or safeguard the collection and Side’s curatorial voice long-term,” she adds. The gallery’s holdings incorporate the AmberSide collection comprising more than 20,000 photographs and 100 films.
An announcement in the new year will provide news and details about new partnerships that Laffler says will be “the silver lining” to the loss of its permanent gallery space, and the years of stress chasing short-term funding solutions. “This summer has been the toughest fundraising climate I’ve ever experienced,” says Laffler. “We set July [2025] as a deadline. If we couldn’t secure revenue funding to reopen on site by then, we would take one of the partnership options that actually allows more people to see Side’s work.”
