Refugee Week 2023
GARETH STEVENS This year’s Refugee Week in Hastings, Rother and Wealden will launch on Sunday 18 June at at the Hastings Contemporary. The sheer span of the events and activities in the week (18-25 June) is so impressive and comprehensive…
May Day Mayday – Public Services in Crisis
PAUL McLAUGHLIN Jeremy Corbyn, the MP for Islington North, was guest of honour at the annual Hastings May Day Workers’ Day March last Saturday (29 April). Several hundred marchers set off from Hastings Pier and walked to the Observer Building…
Embracing Equity
The Stade played host to a series of sporting, political and cultural events on Sunday 12 March under the designation Hear Me Roar to mark International Women’s Day (IWD). The day has its roots in 1909 when New York women garment…
Café of Sanctuary
Gareth Stevens talks to Rossana Leal and Yeser Mohammed at the Refugee Buddy Project’s new Dove Café on Bexhill Road. In a month in which a government minister conceded that Manston Asylum Centre was operating illegally, 11 asylum seekers were…
Hastings Refugee Week
This year, Refugee Week (20-26 June) will see a unique series of creative actions and events taking place in multiple locations across Hastings & St Leonards and beyond which highlight and value the migrant experience, promoting the Refugee Week 2022…
Council Pledges On Refugees
At a full council meeting on 22nd July Hastings Borough Council passed a motion unanimously pledging support for refugees. The motion, introduced by Cllr Andy Batsford, cabinet leader on housing, contained no specific programme of assistance, but promised: • “dignity…
Refugee Week 2020
By Fiona McGarry This year the theme of Refugee Week (15th-21st June) is ‘Imagine’. It’s important that we do try to imagine, so we can begin to understand how people seeking refuge in the UK are treated – very differently…
A Moveable Feast
By Safiya Young August has been a very exciting month, in terms of cooking. Women’s Voice, a “non-profit CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation) run by and for women in Hastings and St Leonards”, recently hosted a series of workshops to promote…
Syrian Resettlement: “Working Brilliantly”, Says Project Co-ordinator
Simon Finlay, Project Co-ordinator of the Syrian Resettlement Programme at Hastings Borough Council, seems a happy man these days. He has spent half a lifetime working for organisations that have endeavoured, on a shoestring, to assist refugees to negotiate the…
A Celebration of Sanctuary
On 13th June the “open” project at Open on sea-front was launched with its first exhibition of photographs by Andrew Grainger. This venue is to be run by the 20 refugee families who have so far arrived in Hastings as…