FOR EVER AMBER COLLECTIVE: Geordie graft, craft and guile down amongst the photos

Who stole the North Sea?

Coming into the Tyne by ship stirred memories of me ma's family, generations of sailors living in and around North Shields and now, mostly gone, most barely remembered. The ferry from Holland crossed an unnaturally flat and well behaved North Sea. Mrs Belgo Geordie were glad of that. She had insisted on taking the top bunk in the cabin looking out the small porthole across the small silvery grey wash. She provided a running' commentary above the Belgo Geordie snores of lights of passing ships, buoys and wind farms. Even with the light wallow of the big ferry she didn't get a wink of sleep and rolled off at North Shields like one of me ancestors who'd crossed turbulent seas in gale force winds. She likes to remind me she comes from seafaring folk but they crossed the gigantic Pacific in canoes navigating by stars and waves. When they were of a mind like! Boot, wa wood yer even think of leaving' the beach on your island when there was plenty of fish nearby and nowt good came at her people across that big ocean that would want to make you go out and meet and greet incoming white folk. Even with her impression of the drunken sailor making landfall she still manages to put me in me place, carrying the cases...

But it were grand to be back on Geordie soil four year after me last visit. Made better by the taxi driver who took us into the city who was a migrant from the Balkans with his native accent salted with Geordie and entertained us with stories of his escape to sanity, never regretting putting down roots in a community where not only did he feel accepted but had become passionate about belonging, even grumbling that his daughters tell him off when he sounds like he has just stepped off from the boat from the old country.

So there we were in Newcastle again with tickets to see the Toon play Watford and an exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery-For Ever Amber. Well, last time I graced St James was in the early 1960's- a game played in fog and fug of fags, farts and blisteringly cold and I canna remember who was playing' who won or where me feet ended, only that I had icicles of snot hanging from both sides of me nose and a half time mug of tea just about sent me off ta infirmary with scalds all the way down to me bladder! Enough to say this year's game was a rare bit of disappointment and gave me the shits. Mike Arse and Sports Rip Off have more than torn the heart and guts out of the relationship that existed between fans and their team and I was ashamed to be part of that on that Saturday afternoon.

But Amber, now that is summat else. A collective that although born in London found its voice, vision and heart amongst the communities of the north east. I have gathered a small collection of their work that has come out on VHS and then DVD and books of photographs when I come across them. The irrepressible sunbeam of Geordie Finn (Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen) and the cool gaze through the lens of Chris Killip (His 1976 Wallsend shot of snow with the slogan on the brick wall "Don't Vote-Prepare for Revolution" and the old man trudging down the hill while a kid pulls his toboggan up over way). Allus good for the eyes and heart here in Sydney when I'm feeling a bit sick for a pie, cod and mushy peas.

The 1969 ten minute film documentary "Maybe" on the Shields ferry setting the tone for their work capturing every day lives in the region. Since then the value of what Amber has achieved cannot be underestimated. Their multi media (but mainly film and photography) ventures has created a comprehensive record of working class communities and of industries that have since died or been replaced on Tyneside and the north east. The mines, steel works, ship building, fishing. Amber's involvement of the communities in art projects has been one of true partnership, not exploitation but often a means of story telling which dignify and honour the lives of ordinary people. And charts the reliance of how communities have adapted to change, Amber's work show's people with humour, courage and a daring to continue to dream despite the odds.

So it were time well spent going through the exhibition at the Laing and there were some laugh out loud moments and some tears, the kids playing on the burnt out wrecks of tonked cars, jumping out of broken windows of abandoned houses, or seated in the street on discarded sofas. It was like my generation of kids in the early sixties frozen in time still surrounded by poverty, still trying to get by thirty years later. You still are left wondering outside the frame of the photograph, where will these children be in ten years, twenty years? And their bairns? Then there was the hope of the new generation of migrants making lives in and around the north east, the photographs in colour of Byker re-visited. Nothing stays frozen in time and that gives me hope that a change will come.

Oh so much more than the football, this exhibition made me proud to be a Geordie, and it reminded me of my roots, of family who are long gone, of the good, the bad and the ugly of life in sixties Tyneside. Although like the Animals when they said "We've Gotta Get Out of This Place...If It's The Last Thing I Ever Do".  I left aged six and never came back to live there but its never left me and Amber reminds me why that is. It is a place of strength, and each time I come back to visit it is, although I live on the other side of the world, still  home.

And an Amber film festival in Gateshead in late January 2016 see: http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/life-tyneside-during-1970s-beamed-10767051