After a short break, the Library of Things has relocated and reopened within HEART community information hub at the Priory Meadow entrance of Hastings Town Hall.

The library has some new librarians and is open on Fridays from 12.00-4.00pm and Saturdays from 10.00am-1.00pm. Fridays also include Make and Mend workshops during library hours and the relaunched cargo bike delivery service for £2.50 a trip. 

Friday 14 June is Sewing Machine Awareness Day, and there’s an opportunity to come and try using a sewing machine between 12.00-3.30pm – and maybe even borrow one to take home.

Another exciting event is the Functional Mobile Phone Project taking place on the first Friday of every month from 5 July onwards. Drop off old phones and chargers so they can be given to people who need phones – with six months’ worth of data. Broken and unfixable phones will go for recycling via community supporters eco project in Bexhill.

For more information, contact info@umbrellasussex.org.uk or visit umbrellasussex.org.uk

Free Family Fun Days at Broomgrove Community Centre

Throughout the summer, Active Hastings will run a number of free themed Saturday Family Fun Days at the Broomgrove Community Centre, including a Beach Dance Party on 15 June, 1.00-3.00pm and Olympic-themed games on 20 July, 1.00-3.00pm. 

Active Hastings also run a range of low-cost or free activities at the Community Centre, including Zumba, Pilates, Creating a Healthier You exercise class, age-friendly activity and social sessions, Boxercise, under 5s Play and Stay, junior Muay Thai and the Friday Night Project.

Heather Jury, Physical Activity Development Officer for Broomgrove at Active Hastings, says: “As part of the UK Prosperity Fund, we are delivering a variety of physical activity opportunities in the Broomgrove area, which we hope will increase social interaction and encourage an active and healthy lifestyle.” 

She would also like to hear what other activities the community would like to see at the centre, as well as anything that stops people from being active. “Pop along to one of the Saturday Family Fun Days to chat to the team.”

For more information visit activehastings.org.uk/listings or follow the Active Hastings Facebook page facebook.com/activehastings

Refugee Week with the Refugee Buddy Project

Following its 25th anniversary last year which saw over 9,500 events in 130 locations in the UK, Refugee Week once again aims to inspire audiences and convey the shared human experiences that bring us together. 

The Refugee Buddy Project Hastings and Rother (TRBP) is one of hundreds of organisations responding to Refugee Week from 17 to 23 June. TRBP works with artists, creators and businesses for a week-long celebration creating a ‘community of welcome’ along the coast. Each year, Counterpoints Arts chooses a theme, and for 2024, it’s Our Home: “Everyone is invited to celebrate what Our Home means to them and make [it] a more welcoming, safe and sustainable place for all.”

Various strands are woven into the TRBP celebration: food and hospitality, stories and memories, and visual representations. There are activities for all, from a pub quiz (to test knowledge of all things British) to a pop-up exhibition and workshop in Priory Meadow; from setting up a garden project (behind Dove café) to a film depicting Hastings’ intergenerational, multinational community (Flavours without Borders) at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery. 

The week offers an extraordinary exhibition by Palestinian photographer Samar Abu Elouf at Electro Studios Gallery. Entitled The Light from Hell, it explores the line between hope and despair in Gaza, living without power, in every sense.

On the Solstice, Friday 21 June, activities centre round a community picnic at the West St Leonards Bathing Pool site. Everyone is encouraged to bring their own food, and there will be shared Palestinian food. Activities include a cycle ride, a beach clean under the title of Caring for our Earth, music, dancing and ‘visual scribing’ to create a visual memory of the event.

For more food experience, the Crown will be teaming up with guest chef from Dove café, Roa al Madi, to include Maqluba, a special collaborative dish, on their menu for the week.

For full information, see programme on p8 of the HIP List or contact rebecca@therefugeebuddyproject.org

Art in the Park

On 19 June, between 10.00am and 3.00pm, as part of Refugee Week, the Art in the Park team are inviting people to come and picnic to find out more about what they do and how they can get involved with the wonderfully creative Arts on Prescription (AOP). This will be a fun day with interactive creative workshops, once again celebrating the theme of Our Home. This will be in collaboration with other local groups promoting the services they offer. 

AOP projects aim to bring art to all, making it accessible and affordable. Tara Reddy says: “We rely on our community and fundraising to cover overheads and a wonderful team of dedicated volunteers to make it happen!“

The team of peer volunteers, artists and wellbeing practitioners provide accessible and inclusive weekly creative activities from Art in the Park at the old bowling pavilion in Alexandra Park to adults and families at pay-what-you-can rates. 

Through the AOP peer mentoring volunteer programme, attendees flourish, access further education and training opportunities, often leading to employment. 

Sanctuary Festival 

On Sunday 23 June there is a free festival organised by Hastings Community of Sanctuary, which works closely with the TRBP. The Sanctuary Festival is a day of music, workshops, talks, activities for kids, food and friends and takes place at Hastings Museum & Art Gallery. It will be bigger than ever this year, with participants from 18 countries taking part.

Hastings Comedy Festival

Get ready for a week of laughter as the 9th annual Hastings Comedy Festival returns this month. This year the festival will run for seven days from Monday 10 June to 16 June. Participating venues include, Electric Palace, Jenny Lind, East Hastings Angling Club, Ye Olde Pump House, Albion, The Crypt, The Printworks, Brewing Brothers (Courtyard) The Good Place, as well as The Piper, Heist Market, Oscars, Sugar Pie Honey Buns and Cumbia Kitchen in St Leonards. 

There is a packed programme of shows throughout the week. Headliners this year include previous British Comedian of the Year Jeff Innocent, Desiree Burch, Lucy Porter and Russell Hicks. Award-winning comedians such as Funny Woman winner Kate Checka, BBC new comedian of the year Frankie Monroe and 2022 Hastings Comedy Festival newcomer winner Dan Harding will be performing their shows during the week. 

Britain’s Got Talent star El Baldiniho will be performing his kid’s comedy magic show at The Observer Building on Saturday 15 June along with Jed and Gary and award-winning kids show, Chemistry of Chaos. 

Hastings Comedy Festival Newcomer competition, The Norman Award, returns on Saturday 15 June at The Crypt. Dan Harding, winner in 2022, will be performing his show at Albion on 13 June. There are many, many more shows to choose from. Programmes are available throughout the town, or you can check the festival’s website for full listings. This year’s poster and programme design is by talented local artist Georgie Wheeler.

Many shows are on a low-ticket warning, with some shows already sold out. The team encourages booking in advance to avoid disappointment, although tickets will be available on the door if the show is not sold out.

Worried about how you’ll cope with post-COP26 blues now that two years of anticipation and two weeks of ‘blah, blah, blah’ draws to a close? Your finest form of prevention might just be to stand still, look around you – and celebrate. 

While the minute-by-minute bulletins detailed the creative new ways of corporate greenwashing in Glasgow, closer to home, climate-concerned local citizens were taking hundreds of small steps to move us all towards the seemingly impossible goal of 1.5c. 

Sure, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has joined the list of eminent observers of UK life to declare that coastal communities have lots of problems. Add to that the various reports and funding bids, dense with data, proving just how awful a place Hastings is to live, go to school, work and be alive in. 

There’s no room in this article to detail the damage these relentless negative narratives have on our health (both physical and mental), but there is time to give a shout out to those who are investing serious and significant effort in reimagining and rebuilding this town as a positive place with great prospects for a cleaner, greener, more resilient future.

Here’s to our heroes running independent cafes, shops and community spaces who work tirelessly to make eating and shopping as beautiful, meaningful and, most importantly, low-carbon, as possible. Three cheers for Wonderfill, Trinity Refill, Naked Larder, Joyful Roots and Hastings Compost Community. You all need a particular vote of thanks – for all you’re doing to remove plastic, reduce waste and encourage the finest forms of consumer behaviour. 

Dandelion, Kings Road – ethical trading

A round of applause, too, for the people running those oft-ignored businesses that make climate-considerate consumption so much easier: our amazing network of charity shops where purchases do double-duty, helping the charity as well as the planet. (Sad to see another disappear from London Road because of a massive rent increase. Shame on you, landlord!) 

Gold stars, too, for St Leonards Clean Water Action Group, Strandliners, Surfers Against Sewage and the UN Association of Hastings and Bexhill for all your efforts to save our seas by pushing for water quality measures and utility companies that place people and planet over profit. 

Well done to the local Zoomers (you know who you are) who have just spent three days online, participating in the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking’s Climate Action Lab, inspired by the words and work of international leading lights like Daniel Christian Wahl, Mike Berners-Lee and Vandana Shiva. You’re stars for taking the time to learn more
about regenerative economies, revitalising relationships and taking responsibility so that the whole town can be enriched, inspired and energised. 

While borough and county council officers, councillors and local citizens rarely come together, here’s to all who lowered the illogical boundaries between them and found time to travel to Sheffield to see how a city can transform its roads into 1.3km of spectacular, climate-resilient gardens – bringing Hastings’ Garden Town one step closer to reality.

Three cheers for Hastings Commons and its continued mission to restore the Observer Building and forge new ways to regenerate whole sections of this town, experimenting with new ways to imagine place, relationship, work and belonging. Here’s to all the inspiring initiatives that are calling Hastings Commons ‘home’ – from responsible retailers like Cheese-on-Sea and Aura Que, to regenerative initiatives like ReWeave and the Library of Things. 

Jess Steele at the opening of the Common Room

Last week the new Common Room (part of the Commons) hosted its first ‘Food-for-Thought’ potluck supper, to restore that age-old habit of ‘companionship’ sharing food (and gossip) together. Here’s to the next one, taking place from 5-7pm on 25 November. 

Still in The Common Room, let’s say thanks to Transition Town Hastings and Energise Sussex Coast for co-hosting a ‘Green Room’ every Thursday. A veritable garden of green, low-carbon ideas and information is growing rapidly. Free energy advice, permaculture workshops, DIY chutney-making, and beginner’s patchwork courses are on the calendar for November. 

Thanks, too, to Hastings Greenways group for getting people out by recently leading a walk to the fantastic low-carbon, straw bale house, while local green goddess, Anna Locke, led a workshop on permaculture at the Marina Allotments. 

And finally, let’s give a big thanks to everyone in Extinction Rebellion, who recently took to the streets to stage a die-in in front of local councillors, for their relentless reminders that the time to act is now. 

Got a little SIMT (Sorry I Missed That)? Don’t be – just slow down, take a deep breath and be grateful to live here. Save your energy for what really matters – don’t waste it worrying. We are privileged to live in a beautiful seaside town, rich with history, and inhabited by people who really are making a difference. 

None of this work is being done on a stage or in the light of a thousand press cameras – but it’s what matters: people with great ideas and tenacity, keeping it local and believing we can achieve great things together. Keep up the great work, all of you. 

• The Common Room is now open Tuesday to Saturday, 12-4pm. 

By Andrew Myers

This is the first of a semi-regular round-up of everything going on in the Hastings Commons.

What is the Hastings Commons?
It’s a place – a collection of buildings in the America Ground, Hastings
It’s an ecosystem of organ-isations working together – Heart of Hastings, White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures, Jericho Road Solutions, Leisure & Learning, and Project Art Works (among others!)

Most importantly, it’s an ethos – community led regeneration. We aim to transform dereliction into community-owned vibrant spaces and homes that are community owned, collaboratively managed and affordable forever.

What are the buildings?
So far – Rock House, the Observer Building, 39 Cambridge Road, 10 Claremont, Rose Cottage, Eagle House – oh, and some caves! 

What’s going on then?
The renovation of the Observer Building continues apace, and public tours will be re-commencing very soon. The ground floor studio of the Rose Cottage Stables has just been renovated and is available to
rent at affordable rates to run learning events and workshops: hastingshive.org.uk/rose-cottage.

The Library of Things opened on 1st August at Eagle House (27-29 Cambridge Road opposite ESK). You can join from £3 a year to borrow useful things and be part of an awesome comm-unity self-help project! Visit heartofhastings.org.uk/hlot. And Retrobella Vintage host a market in the Alley on the first Sunday of the month – the next one is on Sunday 5th September.

We’ve also placed four Kickstart employees in organisations across the Commons, helping young people get back into work. And if you just want to wind down, Eagle House will soon be opening as an ‘open living room’ – a place to relax, chat and look out for each other. We’ve been working with Camerados (camerados.org) on a grand opening for Friday 10th September – watch this space! 

And finally (for the moment) we’re running the New Skills Old Ground project designed to develop digital skills and raise awareness of the history of the America Ground – get in touch to find out more: andrew@hastingshive.org.uk.

Happy commoning!

The Common Treasury of Adaptable Ideas is back in Hastings on 24th October with great speakers and inspiring ideas. 

This time there’s a big emphasis on the ‘circular economy’ – less waste and sharing resources like the Library of Things and the Onion Collective (exploring bio-recycling waste into positive products). We’ll hear from The Bevy (More than a Pub), the first community-owned and run estate pub in the UK, and listen to Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Towns movement, talk about the power of the imagination.

Last week the Taking it Forward event heard how speakers from the first Common Treasury have inspired the first Fun Palace – 5 October at Ore Community Centre – as well as guerilla gardeners popping up all over town. 

West Marina are working on a neighbourhood plan, inspired by hearing the determination of Hazel Tilley from Granby4Streets to reclaim their streets for the community; and Bob Johnston is working on creating The Makings, a collaborative space for local designers and makers to share ideas as well as tools.

• Book your free place at commontreasury2.eventbrite.com