Our collections hold the most astonishing moving image record of life in Yorkshire and the North East of England over the past 130 years.

Our regions’ landscapes are rich in natural beauty: from a coastline of over 200 miles to forest and moorland, hill and dale, the people working – walking the land – to the huge industries that shaped our towns and cities and the working lives of generations before us. Decades of traditions and cultures mixing together to create the communities of today, and the people who joined together to celebrate the extraordinary, great events, and went about their ordinary everyday lives which now reveal such a fascinating insight into the social history of our regions.

Dating from our earliest discovery of film recording Queen Victoria visiting Sheffield in 1897, our collections include work from early pioneering filmmakers and production companies through to industrial and advertising collections, television news and regional programmes from both the BBC and ITV/Yorkshire/TyneTees, to the work of amateur filmmakers, cine clubs, and home movie makers.

The collections are non-fiction, documenting our industrial heritage, shipbuilding, steel, coal, and textiles alongside fishing and farming. They show the changing face of our cities and communities, the architecture, the streets, shops, schools and transport. They show the people and communities in which they live, the cultures, the traditional crafts, leisure time, holidays, sport, nightlife, fashion, the important milestones of our lives.

Search the collections, lose yourself in the films, and if you can’t find what you’re looking for contact us; we’ll help with information about collections that aren’t yet available on our website – we’re constantly cataloguing and digitising more content to view. 

As an Archive our work is never done. We are actively collecting material, whether it is a collection of film found in an attic or company storeroom, or whether it is material shot by people filming today, we’d love to hear from you. We can advise on care of collections, and on how you can help by depositing collections that help to build our regions’ moving image heritage – please do get in touch.