Frock Up Friday was originally conceived by Susan Simms and Bevali Francis in 2020 as a way to ease the pain of COVID lockdown. But we’ve moved way beyond our original purpose.

A small group of women dressing up for fun quickly evolved into a global phenomenon with over 15,000 members from across the world, from all genders and many walks of life, sharing their stories and supporting each other along the way. 

In a world filled with angst, the success of FUF is a wonderful testament to the transformative power of friendship, fashion, love and fun. We became famous for creating one of the world’s most positive, egalitarian and inclusive online communities, and the festival is the biggest event on our calendar – the living embodiment of what we’re all about. 

The festival combines a truly international appeal with a staunchly local flavour. We have frockers travelling from all over Great Britain, from the US, even from Australia, to be with us; but we are hugely proud of our geographical origin of Hastings & St Leonards. Hastings has enjoyed a cultural resurgence in recent years; through the festival, we are committed to supporting local businesses and artists and further improving the profile of the area and the wonderful people who live here.

Everyone, whether they’re a member of the Facebook group or not, is welcome to buy a ticket and come as they are, to shine as themselves and to make friends in the safety of a truly affirming, positive event. Entertainment highlights include our brilliant Friday night Cabaret, including burlesque, comedy, drag, opera and much more. 

Saturday will begin with a colourful parade through the centre of town beginning at The Albion from 11.30am, and this year we invite the people of Hastings to dress up, join in and take their place on the Catwalk which will be outside Owens. 

A wonderful vintage clothing market will be open at the Observer building on Saturday 11am to 4pm where there will be live music and entrance is free. The highlight of the weekend will be Saturday night’s Grand Ball. It will be full of surprises and a great opportunity to walk the red carpet and be a superstar for the night, let’s just say it’s Hollywood themed with a little Bollywood and Dollywood … shh. Then on Sunday, we invite you all to join us for a Sparkle Swim in our beautiful sea in your beautiful outfits!

Our mission is to change lives by breaking down social barriers and build a worldwide inclusive community. We do this by building confidence in people by promoting shared compassion and dressing for dopamine. Come and join us!

Details of the Festival programme and tickets are available on our website frockupfriday.com. 

Creative community passions run high in Hastings. Art and music flow through it like colour in a stick of rock. Festivals drum through the streets with pomp and flamboyance, always looking for venues and rehearsal spaces. Feelings are deep about heritage and preservation. Friends are still heartbroken about the Pier into which they put time, money and finally tears. I hope it’s not my turn to be heartbroken about St Mary in the Castle.

Seeing that wonderful domed ceiling for the first time took my breath away, the backdrop balcony carved out of the rock, looking down on a stage from wooden seats. I’ve seen the wonderful stained-glass window behind the stage curtain, so rarely seen – a wonder revealed in an art installation back in 2010. The wonderful Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra blasting out the Mozart Requiem was an unforgettable sound of voices filling the dome.

School events, big brass bands, dancing, physical performance artists moving around the wide apron of floor, and a spectacular light installation which mesmerised the audience. There have been political awareness support events like The Siege when the Palestinian Jenin Freedom Theatre UK toured in 2015.

March 2017 saw an anniversary celebrating 100 years since the suffragette Muriel Matters took to the skies in an airship to scatter leaflets saying: ‘Votes for Women’. As an Australian she was shocked that British women were still not allowed to vote. She finally came to live in the house next door to St Mary in the Castle. How ironic the Council has called its offices Muriel Matters House when there is no museum of her work.

I understand the Council is putting a large sum of Government money into Hastings Castle, the first Norman castle in Britain, to promote local tourism. And yet no money is forthcoming for St Mary in the Castle, built in the castle

grounds. Is this due to lack of care and imagination, or funds, or both? Shouldn’t we be recruiting fresh young visionaries to join the Council and have a part in community policies?

St Mary is at the very centre of Pelham Crescent, the only local architectural gem equivalent to the Royal Crescent in Bath. I believe money has been awarded to restore the sad looking arcade on the seafront, but it is still boarded up! This should be a beautiful functioning arcade as it once was.

My own festival, Sotto Voce 2015, with the support of the De La Warr Pavilion, brought Italian and local artists together with the Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments to explore themes of Navigation, Galileo, Marco Polo, and others with writings from confinement. Using the Crypt downstairs, a sound installation had voices speaking the words of those who wrote works from prison. There is no other venue in Hastings that could have hosted this festival.

What a huge variety of events we have had here. Post Covid there was Frock Up Friday, which introduced the fabulous local women’s band, The Ravens. We have had a dinner featuring Indian food and culture, and this kind of event reflects the wide cultural range of our town where 91 languages are spoken. So much creative work, including my own personal opera passion – Jenny Miller’s Barefoot Opera which has given us many wonderful productions and the recently created inclusive opera, Bloom Britannia. This mammoth project exposed new audiences and participants to experience art, music, performance, costume and set design to create the magic that is opera.

If only St Mary in the Castle could have the support of a saviour like director Sir Sam Mendes who restored the beautiful Margate cinema for his new film, Empire of Light, bringing, it is believed, £4.8 million to the local economy.

To propose the building be an Asset of Community Value, I am leading the petition to collect nominations. This will ensure St Mary’s remains a community space. Please go to the ‘surveymonkey’ address below and sign up. Let us make sure this space is kept for the use of the people, by the people!

surveymonkey.co.uk/r/2978V9L

That urge to dress up sparked a global community after Bev and Susan started the Facebook group, which at the last count included 14,000 members. It quickly became a support network, helping people get through lockdown by dressing up and feeling good, a place where people could feel safe about dressing up and being themselves. 

We’ve already had Frock up Friday ‘the book’; now Hastings is to host the first ever Frock up Friday Festival! On the weekend of 3rd to 5th September, the town will fill with hundreds of ‘frocked up’ festival goers, attending events throughout the town, with major ones at St Mary in the Castle.

The festival will give Frockers the chance to get together and celebrate, with a mixture of fashion, music and dancing. Hastings is the place where this all started and a town that loves to dress up and party, so it’s the perfect place to host this dress-up festival of fun. 

Highlights of the festival will be a fashion show on Friday 3rd and a ball on Saturday, both at St Mary in the Castle. The many free events throughout the town, include music at The Stade, a procession of frockers, market stalls and a ‘Frocking Trail’ of the shops and bars that have supported Frock Up Friday.

The amazing success of the group was achieved by creating a community of shared values: zero negativity in the group, non-judgemental, freethinking attitudes and positive attitudes toward body confidence, gender, age and styles. As it says on the website, this has “allowed members’ self-confidence to bloom beyond recognition” and “lives have been transformed”. 

As a result, Frock up Friday has already sparked enormous interest with interviews on BBC radio and TV and articles about it throughout the world. So make sure you go down in history as part of this unique event. 

• Full details of the festival programme and tickets can be found at frockupfriday.com

“Frock Up Friday is one of the most wonderful and uplifting ideas to emerge out of #lockdown. With no place to go, why shouldn’t we get all dressed up anyway? It’s a form of self-care. This initiative has created an entirely positive community that has supported each other through the darkest and scariest times, forging relationships online that will certainly last in ‘the new normal’. There’s never been a better excuse to get your glad-rags on than Frock Up Friday – and three cheers for everyone who brightened Friday for so many others.” – Jo Fairley, Co-founder Green & Black’s, The Beauty Bible and author of The Perfume Society.  

Bev and Susan decided that the images and stories from the Facebook page should be commemorated in a book: a beautiful collection of photos, taken by ordinary people of themselves. These images capture their pandemic stories, ranging from the funny side of life to the poignant, the engagements, weddings, births, and graduations that had to change because of the isolation restrictions. 

When it is safe to do so, the team are very keen to get members of the group to come and visit Hastings & St Leonards, where Frock Up first started. A programme of exciting, socially-distanced, events throughout Hastings & St Leonards, including an opportunity to “Meet The Frockers”, will be on offer as well as the opportunity to follow a frocking trail, collecting stamps in your very own Frock Up Friday pass card as you go. Event details will be announced in due course. 

Meanwhile, the Frock Up Friday group continues to function on the Facebook page. This week’s theme is ‘sparkle’, to celebrate the publishing of the book; pick up a copy, get involved! frockupbook@gmail.com

• www.frockupfriday.com

Within a short time, Susan’s alter ego, Sister Suzie, was also popping up online and then at open-air gigs, appearing – amongst other venues – at the amazing Hastings Pier concerts.

Last year saw the completion of Susan’s degree in social sciences which included research into the blues in the southern states of America. And she’s now been persuaded to make her dissertation available for others to read – just in time for Black History Month. sistersuzie.co.uk/my-paper-on-women-in-the-blues.

If you’re interested in the blues, it’s a fascinating read. But it’s also an absorbing read if you want to learn more about pre-60s America, the struggles for black emancipation or the empowerment of women. The paper is written in an accessible style and the introduction gives a taste of what’s inside.

Talking of the myriads of stories, theories, songs, versions and arguments about the blues she says: “My aim is to bring to the reader a new or an enlightened standpoint on this sacrosanct genre of music. I endeavour to highlight what the blues is as a sound, what may have influenced the sounds and lyrics historically and sociologically, and then explore the entire subject from a female perspective.”

She explains how her paper “celebrates the women who began singing the blues and how they broke through societal structures that bound them, achieving a form of gender equality and liberation within a specific music form.”  

The first chapter introduces the blues as a musical form: in just 820 words plus illustrative song she provides an engaging background to what is to follows. Chapter 2 provides harrowing details of life during slavery as well as following emancipation, and how these factors shaped the blues.  

But it’s the focus on women in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 that is unusual; a story that includes their experience of slavery and how that informed the development of the blues. It’s to some extent the untold story of the blues, since history has traditionally been told from the perspective of men.

She tells how that ‘traditional story’ begins with ‘the ragged wanderer’ who had left the fields to seek his fortune – inevitably a poor black male; she then introduces another perspective of how it was also forged in brothels of cities like New Orleans. In this narrative the sexualised words were to attract business – and sung by women such as the obscure Mamie Desdoumes (who was not even the descendent of slaves).   

It’s interesting stuff and pro-vides useful insights into where
we are today, both musically and sociologically. 

• To see the full dissertation go to https://tinyurl.com/yxwlvbjm