Archives for Culture
BFI Film Training Goes Live
CHRIS CONNELLEY Last week, most school and college students were on a well-earned halfterm break, but for a group of young people with an interest in a creative career, all…
Leigh Dyer at Sea
VICTORIA KINGHAM Having seen and appreciated Bev Harling’s memory tree, it was interesting to discover a little more about Leigh Dyer, the sculptor whose metal works are so much part…
The Weight of Crimson by Holly Rankin
HOLLY RANKIN was a student at East Sussex College Hastings when she wrote this story. As a budding author, and having been told that nobody used the ‘second person’ you,…
Parlez-Vous Franglais
VICTORIA KINGHAM explores an on-stage café and its residents Encountering David Manners for the first time, you’d be forgiven for passing him in the street. A slight, quiet, youthful figure…
Light Blue Touch Paper
DAVID MILTON Flatland Projects rarely sticks to the framed-pictures-on-a-wall gallery format. Sometimes it rather resembles a laboratory or playground. The message it typically gives off is “Work In Progress” and…
Peep Shows
DAVID MILTON Discrete Violations presents a selection of the work of Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978), an American artist whose practice moved from the study of architecture to a form of fine…
Edlund Jurd and Goller at Barnaby’s
VICTORIA KINGHAM A couple of years ago I interviewed Rebecka Edlund for this paper. At that time she had fairly recently graduated, and the band she was touring with was…
Celebration of Live!
Celebration of Live! is a two-day festival celebrating everything that makes live music special. It will bring together some of Hastings’ most beloved musicians, exciting emerging talent and internationally recognised…
Pictures at The White Rock
VICTORIA KINGHAM Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra’s 10 years in the business was celebrated on 13 October with a concert at the White Rock, with the largest orchestra Marcio Da Silva has…
Artificial – Yes it Is
VICTORIA KINGHAM Recently I experimented with a free program called , which, quite startlingly, will produce a whole novel on very few prompts, and even a small eerie picture-link based…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: What’s Changed for Home Renters?
Eviction: A Social History of Rent By Jessica FieldPublished by Verso, 2026, RRP £ at BookbusterREVIEW BY TIM BARTON A friend came into Bookbuster the other day. She had had…
Poetry Corner: RUSTY GIANTS SURROUND US
HENRY NORMAL The sky over Winchelsea beach is twinned with raspberry candyfloss There's a showroom of cloud types at all points of the compass The sun freefalls over Fairlight throwing…
Halloween Spooktacular
The Coven Club, showcasing femme-fuelled rock, punk and heavy metal bands, returns to The Carlisle Rock Bar in Hastings for a spooky night of full-throated live music on Friday 30…
Get Yourself a Gun – Alabama 3 Come to St Leonards
Alabama 3 will bring their celebrated acoustic show to St Leonard’s Church, St Leonards-on-Sea, on Saturday 14 November 2026, for a rare intimate performance in one of the town’s most…
Pizza and Plays 2: Archie and the Fox Woman
At The Stade on 30 October, Spun Glass Theatre will stage the second of their three newly-written Hastings history plays, this one by Anna Atkinson, followed by pizza and DJ…
James Brute Solo Album Launching at Brewing Brothers Courtyard
Hastings-based singer-songwriter James Brute is set to launch his debut album, Move To The Ghost, on Friday 16 October with a special event at the Brewing Brothers Courtyard in ;…
De La Warr: News, History, and Outer Space
From historians and cultural commentators to an astronaut who has seen Earth from space, the upcoming lineup of talks at the De La Warr Pavilion brings fascinating people and thought-provoking…
Five Alive
Hastings Library Hosts a National Poetry Day Feast CHRIS CONNELLEY Politicians often bang on about our lack of productivity compared to other countries, and there may be some truth in…
Sahib & Matta-Clark at De La Warr
PREM SAHIB Chamber is a mid-career survey of work by British artist Prem Sahib, bringing together work spanning twenty years of one of the most distinctive practices in British art…
Tiedto the Other Side
VICTORIA KINGHAM There’s much to admire about the work of Otobong Nkanga, a Nigerian-Belgian artist whose extraordinary tapestry Tied to the Other Side fills one wall of the Foreshore Gallery…
Blue Humans
DAVID MILTON takes a well-defined view of Edge at Hastings Contemporary Exhibition In Situ, Courtesy of Hastings ContemporaryGeorge Rouy, The Witness Cool college kids chew the fat about it. Ambitious…
I’ll Swim to France!
SARAH MILNE There are some things you say as a child that disappear completely. Others, for reasons you can’t quite explain, stay with you. I was born in Hastings, although…
Hastings Jazz Festival – A Dedication to Joy
VICTORIA KINGHAM Last weekend’s Jazz Festival was a sell-out, hugely successful, supremely managed and organised, with some of the best performances from all across the genre. Musicians and audiences alike…
Salon Music
Worlds collapse into one St Leonards House VICTORIA KINGHAM On a brief internet search, it was fascinating to discover that while the earliest known musical instrument, a Neanderthal flute carved…
Hastings Chamber Music Festival 2026 – Transfiguration
Hastings Chamber Music Festival 2026 presents four varied programmes united by the theme Transfiguration, exploring music shaped by change, reflection, conflict and the search for peace. The Festival opens with…
Jazz Hastings Next Gig
Next week Jazz Hastings will host an innovative trio consisting of three excellent, award-winning musicians who also happen to be women. With all the excitement surrounding the upcoming Jazz Festival,…
A Medieval Thrill on the Hill
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING are conquered by castle drama As you no doubt know, the Tapestry has come ‘home’. But you might think there is nothing new to be…
Bronson: Man Behind the Myth
Francis Saunders in a powerful new drama Bronson is a new one-man stage production coming to the Kino-Teatr in St Leonards. We caught up with the team who will bring…
Strands of Sustainability
East Sussex artists Antonia Chitty and Julie Gurr present STRANDS at DEPO Hastings as part of the Coastal Currents Arts Festival 2026. The exhibition brings together contemporary fibre art and…
Behind the Scenes at the Jazz Festival
VICTORIA KINGHAM talks to the organisers behind this year’s event Last year, the first year of Hastings’ newest jazz venture, the Festival was very much a home-grown enterprise. Not at…
Titans of Text
CHRIS CONNELLEY listens and learns from two literary legends The Hastings Book Festival returned in rude good health this year (its 9th, can you believe it?) with a beefed-up committee,…
Wot Italian? Forcione and Graffoe
After 20 years, award-winning comedian Boothby Graffoe and Italian guitar legend Antonio Forcione are reuniting for Wot Italian?, a new tour that brings high art and high comedy together on…
Before It Was Water
GEORGE MINGOZZI-MARSH Before It Was Water is a new body of work by Miroslava Večeřová exploring the ocean as a shared, more-than-human home, and the porous relationships between human bodies…
Exploring Vietnamese Music in Hastings
JUDE MONTAGUE Van Nguyen, Jude Montague and MaryAnn Royse have been exploring Vietnamese music from the mid-twentieth century and will be presenting some of this emotional and moving music at…
Bookbuster Review: An Accursed Witch Read?
Netherwood By Jake ArnottPublished by Titan, 2026, RRP £ BY TIM BARTON Unlocking the bookshop one morning in June, the door lodged against something. It was dark and hard to…
Poetry Corner: THE SUNKEN FOREST
HENRY NORMAL In a time before humans could write here, they looked down from their caves onto the tops of trees Then the mere movement of liquid slowly wore away…
RIP to a Local Legend
JUDE MONTAGUE Andy Neate died suddenly, sending a shock through the Hastings music community. A regular at the Jenny Lind pub with his Balearic chill band, Los Twangueros, and more…
Women, Work, and the Weight of Expectation
ANTHEA CARLING The Trouble With Women opens as part of Coastal Currents Festival on 5-6 and 12-13 September in the artist’s own home in Hastings Old Town. Lauren Joy KennettWriting…
Afrit Nebula: What Next?
An Afrit is a powerful demon in Arabian myths. A Nebula is an interstellar cloud of ; Local band Afrit Nebula have been gigging mainly around Hastings, St Leonards and…
PhotoHastings ’26
GARY WILLIS PhotoHastings’ collective of photographers aims to inspire an appreciation of contemporary photographic art through its annual festival programme. It is directed by Tracy Jones and Neale Willis, with…