ARTS HASTINGS

Connecting culture across Hastings & St Leonards

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.

Download Focus Wheel summary (PDF)

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

Connecting culture across Hastings & St Leonards

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.

Download Arts Hastings Terms of Reference (PDF)

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
Playing The Race Card
Soundcastle
Spun Glass Theatre
The Bright Foundation

Beyond the Seafront

A guided introduction to the artists, organisations and creative communities reshaping Hastings and St Leonards

Beyond the Seafront is a guided introduction to the artists, organisations and creative communities reshaping Hastings and St Leonards. It marks the beginning of a new series of events celebrating the town’s cultural life while exploring the vital role philanthropy can play in helping it to flourish.

Each year, the tour will explore a different part of our creative ecology. This first edition begins in St Leonards, whose remarkable transformation over the past decade has seen artists, independent businesses, cultural organisations and exceptional food and drink venues establish one of the country’s most vibrant creative neighbourhoods.

Running throughout the same weekend, XMTR Audio Arts Festival is one of the UK’s most exciting celebrations of creative audio and sonic storytelling. The tour will include selected highlights from the festival programme, offering opportunities to experience performances, installations and immersive listening works by local and international artists.

Tour Outline

The afternoon will begin from 3pm and will include visits to The Benbow Arts Space, where guests will meet a range of local cultural organisations, including Bright Foundation, Hastings Fat Tuesday, Hastings Television Museum and Soundcastle. The tour continues through St Leonards and along the seafront, taking in selected highlights from XMTR Audio Arts Festival, including The Pier Sings, Tony Birch’s immersive sound installation and audio experience.

At 6pm, the tour culminates at 12 Claremont: A Creative Community, home to Project Art Works and Amici Studio. Beautifully restored by Hastings Commons, the landmark Victorian building has become a centre for contemporary art, creative practice and community activity. Here, both organisations will co-host a reception featuring a keynote by guest speakers exploring the role of philanthropy in supporting ambitious cultural organisations and artists, alongside an informal performance by Hastings International Piano on one of the festival’s Painted Pianos.

Guests will be invited to explore Project Art Works’ current Rights Based exhibition and learn more about its pioneering work at the intersection of art and care, supporting neurodivergent artists and artists with complex support needs. They will also have the opportunity to experience Amici Studio’s exhibition Every Second Breath by Czech artist Miroslava Večeřová, opening the previous week alongside her Sussex Spotlight presentation at Hastings Contemporary. Combining sculpture, drawing and an immersive sound installation created in collaboration with sound artist Dr Isobel Anderson, the exhibition explores our relationship with the ocean, breath and the more-than-human world.

For those wishing to continue in to the evening, there will be an optional dinner at BUNKA, the town’s new rooftop restaurant and bar, featuring an pan-Asian-inspired sharing feast of vibrant seasonal dishes and signature BUNKA plates, accompanied by a special performance by the acclaimed writer and poet Inua Ellams presented by Hastings Storytelling Festival.

YEAR OF CULTURE 2028

Hastings is an unapologetically unconventional town — shaped by its coastline, defined by its independence, and driven by a centuries-long tradition of grassroots creativity..

Arts Hastings CIC and Hastings Borough Council will press ahead with a locally-led Hastings Year of Culture 2028 - honouring the community energy generated by its Town of Culture bid and launching a lasting cultural strategy for the town.

Hastings has not been selected to progress in the UK Town of Culture 2028 competition. Rather than allow the momentum of the bid process to dissipate, Arts Hastings CIC and Hastings Borough Council have confirmed that they will move forward together to deliver a community-rooted, locally-led Hastings Year of Culture 2028 - on the town's own terms.

The decision reflects the scale of public engagement generated through the bid: more than 300 survey responses, 250 participants in in-person consultations, and 8,000 public comments gathered through the Plan for Neighbourhoods. That investment of community energy will not go to waste.

The vision, creative themes and partnership network developed for the bid remain fully intact. The three themes that emerged from consultation - Grassroots to Global, Creative Health and Landscape, and Radical Welcome - will shape a full programme of activity running through 2028, culminating in the publication of a ten-year cultural strategy for Hastings.

Adam Daly, Arts Hastings CIC, said, “Hastings does not wait for permission. An unsuccessful bid outcome does not diminish what this town has shown the world about its ambition, creativity and community spirit. We are moving forward - and we are doing this as Hastings, in the way that only Hastings can.”

Why this matters for Hastings

Hastings faces some of the most acute social challenges in the country: ranked in the bottom 10 nationally for social mobility, the highest unemployment rate in East Sussex, and 27.7% of children living in poverty. A sustained, community-rooted cultural programme is not a peripheral concern in this context - it is a deliberate and evidence-based intervention.

Delivering a successful locally-led Year of Culture in 2028 also creates the strongest possible foundation for future national competition bids and demonstrates to Arts Council England, the National Lottery and other funders that Hastings has the infrastructure, community mandate and creative ambition to be taken seriously as a place of culture.

Cllr Julia Hilton, Deputy Leader of Hastings Borough Council and lead councillor for shaping places, regeneration and community wealth building, added, “The council has believed in Hastings' cultural ambition from the start, and that commitment has not changed. Our investment continues. We are proud to stand behind a locally-led Year of Culture, and we will actively work with Arts Hastings and the wider amazing creative community in Hastings to deliver real, lasting benefit to residents - especially those in communities that have waited longest for opportunity.”