All Posts

As my lemon and ginger tea cools on the table beside me and my interviewees get situated, I look around the space. I’d never been inside Afri-Co-Lab before, and it’s so much more than I’d imagined.

Glenn Veness and his wife, Kathy, are a couple on a mission. A mission to create peace, love and happiness amidst a suburban council estate in Hollington.  I was buzzing earlier this year when I popped my Glennstonbury Festival cherry.

If you’re local to the Hastings area and you haven’t heard of Brook Tate yet, do you even have ears? Whether he is painting, writing, teaching maths, singing or dancing, Brook Tate is a force to be reckoned with: an insanely talented creative and proud human being with the courage to be vulnerable in front of audiences, as well as being unapologetically himself

How our film about the occult side of Hastings told us what it wanted to be about, and we just did what we were told…

Words by Geoff Howard Illustrations by Mel Elliott It’s the Wednesday morning following Jack in the Green and everyone is exhausted due...

It’s the Wednesday morning following Jack in the Green and everyone is exhausted due to five days without water – and what does any sensible Hastinger drink when there’s no water? Beer!

A conversation with Richard Mark Rawlins about community on the coast. As I make the short walk from my house to the home and studio of Richard Mark Rawlins, I am struck by the vibrant creativity that fills our small seaside town.

No doubt it seemed like a great idea at the time. But the best-laid acid house plans and all that… On May 6, Marky Souter left his home in Cornwall at 5am to catch an early morning flight out of Newquay to Gatwick. From there, he took the train to Hastings

Many of you won’t know this, but Sonny’s family originally had a shop in King’s Road and now he’s back with a restaurant to add to their shop in the Old Town, where Sonny regularly smokes mackerel using oak chippings.

It was a few years ago that I first experienced ‘Mackerel Day’. It was blissfully warm and I’d been on the beach in front of Marine Court with friends and family and some small cans of gin and tonic from the shop. It was late afternoon, the light was soft and the beach was full of people enjoying the good weather, scared it wouldn’t last.

‘To keep balance, you must keep moving’. It’s Einstein’s words that Maria McErlane quotes in her recent memoir Bumps in the Road, and which are particularly apt for this woman whizzing about our town. 

Deep-rooted in traditional 18th-century celebrations to ring in the beginning of summer, Hastings’ Jack in the Green is much like any other folk festival held in the UK, of which there are many, and yet so often people appear confused, bemused, and stare at me wide-eyed and agog when I explain a typical May bank holiday weekend in our fair town.

At one of the most prestigious buildings on the South Coast is the work of one of the South Coast’s most prestigious painters. In the first floor gallery of the De La Warr Pavilion, Hastings resident and acclaimed British painter, Laetitia Yhap’s exhibition entitled ‘An Ending to a Beginning’, features intricate paintings of fishermen on The Stade Beach in Hastings Old Town.

It’s the motto imprinted on badges, flags and the forearms (I like to imagine) of soggy folk across the land. Emma proudly declared it as I joined her for coffee, along with the rest of the St Leonards Blue Tits… Blue Bells or Mermaids.

Meet the new wave of Young Music Promotors on the South Coast. After some turbulent and stormy years for hospitality everywhere, Hastings is fortunate that a new wave of young promoter blood is washing onto the south coast shores

St Leonards on Sea has passed through many incarnations since its Victorian heyday, when Decimus Burton’s glamourous villas brought the fashionable crowd down from London to take in the sea air. Of late, however, it is arguably our ever-growing food scene which is tempting locals and weekend breakers to visit. 

What do you get if you cross ‘90s Britpoppers, an indie rock/post-punk heritage, and an electronica queen with a St Leonards sensibility? You get Aircooled. If that sounds like a joke, it most definitely isn’t.

This is the story of how David Weir (CBE & British multi gold medal paralympic wheelchair athlete) met his wife Victoria and how after mutual disastrous relationships, they created a happy, blended family down on the South Coast.

Poly Styrene is a Punk Icon.Poly Styrene’s image, words and music willLive Forever.Poly Styrene will continue to inspire, educate and excite generations to come. Poly’s daughter, Celeste Bell summed her mother up beautifully in her introduction to the book ‘Dayglo – The Poly Styrene Story’ (Omnibus Press, 2019).

Each of the shops in this guide has donated £15 to the brilliant, local charity: Seaview Project. This year, shopping local means more than ever!