Please Sign our Petition!

If you disagree with our funding cut by the Arts Council - PLEASE sign our petition via the link below and pass it on!

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/44355.html

Petition

Signed and commented. I hope a solution can be found to keep up Side, which even if you don't count documentary photography, is one of the dozen of photography-full-stop galleries in the whole of the UK.

A shame....but

I too think it will be a terrible shame to lose the side gallery.

However, as someone who has first hand experience of how Amber/Side operate, I find their statement over the loss of funding disingenuous and typically self serving.

They ask about the loss of funding within the context of their egalitarian ethic, and then answer their own question. They won't allow for an independent board or external scrutiny, which the Arts Council highlighted, and I think they were correct to do so.

I don't think the Side Gallery will actually close. After all, the building is owner by the collective, so rent to an external landlord is not an issue, and they do have a huge archive to draw on if nothing else to hang on the walls.

I won't be perpetuating their self interest by signing their petition in this instance unfortunately.

Thanks, Mark... but

Just a note of clarification, really, on Mark P's comment above... You can't have a board and be an egalitarian collective. The strength of the Amber collective lies in the members taking full legal, moral, financial and artistic responsibility for the work. The work that continues to be achieved would not have been possible in another structure and it's the work that matters to us. And looking at the comments on the petition, it matters to a lot of other people too.

It's also the case that current collective does not own the buildings and Side Gallery does pay rent. And rates. And electric. And photographers. And printers. And, in principle at the BECTU workshop minimum rate, wages... etc... etc...

We are responsible for a large and beautiful and important photographic archive and, although it isn't supported by any public money, it does, itself, require time and money, which we have to raise. We do show the fantastic work that is held in it. We will continue to do so. And we will continue to build it. It provides a context, it provides inspiration, it informs contemporary questions (see the current exhibition on protest photography, A Luta Continua!). But Side Gallery is not a museum. The sustaining excitement is in contemporary documentary - both the work we are able to produce and the work we are able to exhibit.

Mark's confidence in our survival is a comfort. And, in fact, at this moment (and in strong part because of the support we are being shown through the petition and the emails to the Arts Council) we may be beginning to share his confidence. The response is having an effect - ACE may have been surprised by it, but they are paying attention. The more it keeps coming, the more it will deliver. It's as simple as that.

And if our arguments seem, to Mark, self-serving, it just might be because we are involved in a struggle here. Big thanks to all those who have signed. It means a lot to us.

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My apologies for not having a full grasp on which historical members of the collective kept ownership and title of the property the gallery and current collective occupy.

I still stand by by main contention though, which is, that whilst Amber/Side have the right to run their affairs as they choose, the Arts Council also have every right to set conditions for the provision of public monies.

Perhaps a bit less dogmatism by both parties is what is required. We aren't still living in 1968 unfortunately.