Seafront Murals Could Be Repeat Business
The 17 colourful murals recently painted on ‘suntrap’ booths along the seafront at the side of Goat Ledge café are the outcome of an initiative Painting the Prom conceived and organised by café owner Will Stevens and other St Leonards residents. Fronted by local project programmers Good Stuff in St Leonards in partnership with arts charity Home Live Art, and funded by a number of arts foundations and public funders (see below), the murals take advantage of the vaulted wall-spaces of the lower promenade provided by the original 1930s concrete creation of Sydney Little.
CREDIT: Suzanne Kelly
The aim of the programme, according to Good Stuff’s website, goodstuffinstlens.com painting-the-prom is “to encourage people to feel more connected, proud and invested in the place they live, whilst providing vital economic support to local artists”.
Each of the designs, responding to a set collective theme of ‘day-dreaming’, has been created individually by residents of Hastings and St Leonards. Nine are the work of local artists after a public call-out and selection by a panel from 161 design entries. Four were commissioned from community organisations – the Seaview Project, the Refugee Buddy Project, Eggtooth, and FSN. Four were selected from over 100 entries submitted by local primary schools entering into a ‘Design a Mural’ competition. Each accomplished design received a £300 fee plus materials.
The designs were painted around the end of May and are intended to last for the rest of this year and through next winter as a temporary outdoor gallery. The nature of the materials and their exposure to the natural elements of sea and wind make any idea of permanence impractical. However, Katy Baird of Good Stuff, basking in the “incredibly positive reaction” that this year’s programme has engendered, says that moves are already afoot to find funding for a repeat next spring.
On 30th May, HIP quizzed a couple of artists as they worked on their paintings.
Adam Donovan paints his vision of the pier
CREDIT: Suzanne Kelly
Adam Donovan was creating an imaginative vision of the pier, with a boat being taken down by a Kraken. He works for the charity HFS, but studied art in secondary school, and says he always had a passion for it.. “The inspiration is my father; he’s moving away from town and also retiring, so I wanted to paint something to remind him of Hastings. I sent in my idea and they loved it.”
Jazmine Miles-Long, an ethical taxidermist who has done work with the Hastings Museum, was painting a design “not only beautiful but informative and relevant to the setting….I wanted to do a piece for people looking out to sea of the birds they can see while sitting on this bench.”
Jazmine Miles-Long in front of her bird mural
CREDIT: Suzanne Kelly
Digital images of each of the designs, along with comments made on each by their creators, can be accessed on the Good Stuff website.
• Good Stuff in St Leonards is funded as part of the Creative Civic Change programme supported by Big Lottery Fund, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Local Trust.
The initiative has also secured funding from Safer St Leonards,
a Home Office-funded project led by the Sussex Police Crime Commissioner, from the Foreshore Trust and from Hastings Borough Council.
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