Industrial Epic
From AmberSide, Newcastle upon Tyne
At Refractive at the Liberal Club, 32 High Street, Paisley, PA12BZ
15th September – 7th November 2026
Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm.
Admission Free
Industrial Epic is a photographic exhibition that celebrates the monumental and enduring resilience of industrial communities.
Drawing on the Iconic AmberSide Collection from Newcastle Upon Tyne, Industrial Epic invite audiences to reflect on their connections to place, identity and history. The Exhibition centres on universal themes, pride, loss and resilience with dramatic cinematic compositions of the North East of England providing a lens through which visitors can explore these ideas.
In Paisley the imagery resonates deeply, evoking memories of the town’s industrial heyday while inspiring reflection on its current regeneration.
This project not only celebrates industrial heritage but also inspires hope for the future, demonstrating how legacies from working class and often marginalised perspectives can be preserved and shared for the future.
Access Information:
Entrance to the Exhibition space, is via stairs at 32 High Street. Disabled Access is on one level and available from the back entrance to the Liberal Club at 27 School Wynd, Paisley. Note: this is a cobbled street and parking is not available at the entrance at 27 School Wynd. Parking is available by the church at 13 School Wynd and is free after 6pm.
Lecture Event with Industrial Epic:
Curating Film and Photography of Working Class Culture
A presentation and discussion with Laura Laffler, Managing Director or Amber Film and Photography Collective in Newcastle.
Laura’s presentation will look in detail at the work of the Amber film and photography collective over 25 years in capturing the working class culture of the North East of England. The Amber Film & Photography Collective began in London in 1968. The following year they relocated to Newcastle, driven by the founding members’ vision to reconnect with the working-class culture that shaped them.
Thursday 29th October at 7.30pm
At The Liberal Club, 32 High Street, Paisley, PA12BZ
Admission Free.
About Laura Laffler:
Laura Laffler is the Managing Director of the Amber Film and Photography Collective. She holds an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, specialising in Digital Media and Curatorship. She has extensive experience in fundraising, nonprofit management, and large-scale digitisation projects, including work with the Smithsonian Institution and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM). In 2015, she joined the Amber Film & Photography Collective and launched the digitisation programme. In 2008, Laura developed a crowdsourced Wikimedia platform for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Numismatics department, aimed at community-based expert object identification. She also served as a research consultant with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Cultural Centre, where she conducted policy-related research and spearheaded an archival database and scanning program to help preserve tribal artefacts and prevent the U.S. government from mismanaging them.
Refractive at The Liberal Club
Our new exhibition space is at the Oakshaw Suite in the Liberal Club at 32 Paisley High Street, PA12BZ.
The Refractive Collective of film and digital artists have spent the last 18months creating this working artists exhibition space in central Paisley. Our exhibitions are free to the communities of Renfrewshire and beyond, we are providing an accessible space where everyone is welcome to enjoy the space and the unique digital exhibition programme.
The exhibitions you will see are diverse in nature, some from regional makers others from national and international partner artists and organisations, everything is designed to inspire and interest artists and audiences.
Behind the scenes from our production room artists are working to create new films and exhibitions from our region for audiences to enjoy.
In the evenings you will see the rooms lit up, we run artists workshops and meet ups to support a wide network of digital makers or all ages and career stages.
In addition Refractive will regularly present independent film screenings of award winning, documentary, drama, short film and animation from local, national and international film makers. Catch the film listings on our cinema pages.
