ARTS HASTINGS
Welcome to Arts Hastings
Arts Hastings is a strategic cultural network bringing together organisations, practitioners, and partners to strengthen and promote culture across Hastings and St Leonards.
We support collaboration, champion events and venues, and represent the cultural sector at a strategic level to help culture thrive year-round.
What we’re doing now
- Supporting collaboration across the cultural sector
- Promoting cultural activity and events across the town
- Shaping shared priorities through our Focus Wheel
- Mapping none for profit culture organisations in the town
- Delivery partner for Hastings Town of Culture bid
Our current priorities include:
- Cultural infrastructure and spaces
- Year-round events and programmes
- Access, inclusion, and participation
- Place, tourism, and visibility
- Partnership working and delivery
Our priorities are reviewed regularly
in response to local needs.
ARTS HASTINGS
Membership
Arts Hastings Membership broadly reflects the cultural fields of Arts Council England:
Arts Diversity / Arts Education/ Combined Arts / Community Arts / Creative Health / Dance / Film/photography / Literature / Museums & Galleries / Music / Theatre / Tourism / Venues / Visual Arts.
Together with National Portfolio Organisations, Local Authorities, and Arts Council England representatives reflect the diversity across Hastings’ communities.
Meetings are held Quarterly with Special Interest Groups leading on specific projects that will feed into the main group.
Representatives from the following organisations make up the membership of Arts Hastings
- Arts Council England
- East Sussex County Council
- Hastings Borough Council
- Hastings Neighbourhood Board/Venues
- Home Live Arts (NPO)
- Project Art Works (NPO)
- Applause Rural Touring (NPO)/Seaglass Arts
- Hastings Contemporary (NPO)
- Hastings Museum & Art Gallery (NPO)
- Hastings Fat Tuesday/1066 Music City
- 18 Hours (St Leonards Festival/Hastings Storytelling Festival/ 1066 Country/ Hastings Town Board)
- 1066 Music City /Audiotrope / Coastal Currents
- Soundcastle
- Spun Glass Theatre
- The Bright Foundation
- Vacancy - In discussion and pending confirmation
TOWN OF CULTURE
supported by Hastings Borough Council and Arts Hastings CIC
Town of Culture is a new government competition, which towns across the UK are invited to enter. The winning town will be awarded £3 million to deliver a cultural programme in 2028, and the two runners-up will receive £250,000 each to deliver elements of their bid.
Hastings’ bid will be project managed and written by Arts Hastings CIC with input from across the cultural community and creative industry sectors. The council will remain the accountable body for the bid, providing governance, oversight and strategic support throughout the process.
For the initial expression of interest phase, the focus is on answering three questions around how we want to tell our Hastings story, how culture can be used to build on local strengths and look to the future, while addressing local priorities, and finally how we will empower communities to shape the eventual programme.
To ensure that we can create a strong, inclusive, forward-looking and ambitious bid that reflects the breadth and diversity of cultural activity in Hastings and St Leonards we asked for input from across the cultural and community sectors.
TOWN OF CULTURE
To help inform the EOI two public meetings were held, with more than 200 people signing up. Attendees included representatives from our talented and expansive community of artists, creative practitioners, and craftspeople, as well as cultural and creative organisations, businesses, and entrepreneurs. People from our respected and valued voluntary and community organisations, reflecting communities and interest groups across the town, also attended, alongside developers, entrepreneurs, and public sector service providers.
To supplement their contributions an online questionnaire was made available to all residents, asking them what they want for Hastings Town of Culture. More than 400 responses were gathered with special efforts to encourage young people, the elderly, and those with comparatively limited engagement with culture to share their views.
The consultation findings guided the core themes and objectives of our bid and provided a framework that centres on our communities' needs. The responses are passionate, vibrant, and multifaceted reflecting a town proud of its unconventionality, its sense of independence and its commitment to its communities.
There is a widespread and universal belief in the town that it possesses all (and more) of what is needed to be recognised with the honour of being named the UK’s first Town of Culture.
TOWN OF CULTURE
Our bid for UK Town of Culture 2028, led by Arts Hastings CIC in partnership with Hastings Borough Council and a wide coalition of community and cultural organisations, sets out a bold vision for a year-long, town-wide programme built on three themes: Grassroots to Global, Creative Health and Landscape, and Radical Welcome. Together, these reflect a deep belief that world-class culture and everyday creativity belong to everyone — and that taking culture into every neighbourhood, removing barriers to participation, and putting residents at the heart of the programme are not just ambitions, but commitments.
The bid responds directly to Hastings' real challenges — low social mobility, poor health outcomes and limited opportunity for young people — and sets out a clear plan for how culture can drive meaningful change. By embedding co-creation and community agency at the programme's core, we will create pathways into skills, education and employment, strengthen social connections, and improve wellbeing across the town. The legacy will extend well beyond 2028: a stronger cultural infrastructure, a more resilient creative economy, and more people — in more parts of Hastings — with the confidence and opportunity to participate in cultural life.
Visit Hastings Town of Culture for further updates.