There’s no such thing as a silly question…

Do I have to pay?
No, it’s free to join. In the future we may introduce a nominal fee to cover our admin costs, but for now it’s completely free. In the meantime we do accept donations, but only if your current financial situation allows it.
Can I make a donation?
Yes of course. Hastings Creatives is awesome for lots of people, but we need amazing people like you to help keep it available for everyone in the community. A small donation is all it needs to help keep the servers ticking, thanks. Donate

Please only make a donation if your current financial situation allows it.

If you want to help in ways that doesn’t involve your bank account, then getting the message out there is a huge help too! There are many creative individuals in the local area who still don’t know about Hastings Creatives, so we need awesome people like yourself to help spread the word!

How do I enter my details on the Directory?
Go to the Directory page or use the button below to add your listing. Create a Directory Listing

Have your biography text [100 words] and three images ready [File can be no bigger than 1MB, images must be 600 – 1200px wide and 400 – 800px high]

Fill in the relevant details, including captions for the photographs (these are visible when a cursor hovers over the image)

Agree to the Terms and Conditions and submit your listing.

You will receive an email saying that your listing is pending approval, and another email will follow to confirm that it is live.

How do I join the email list?
Click ‘sign up to the email list’ on our homepage – this sends an email to groups.io – you will then receive a note to say that you have requested to join, and you will need to confirm your email address. You will then receive a welcome email that will sound very much like this:

Hello,

Welcome to the hastingscreatives@groups.io group at Groups.io, a free, easy-to-use email group service. Please take a moment to review this message.

To learn more about the hastingscreatives@groups.io group, please visit https://groups.io/g/hastingscreatives

To start sending messages to members of this group, simply send email to hastingscreatives@groups.io

If you do not wish to belong to hastingscreatives@groups.io, you may unsubscribe by sending an email to hastingscreatives+unsubscribe@groups.io

To see and modify all of your groups, go to https://groups.io

Regards,

The hastingscreatives@groups.io Moderator

If you click the link to learn more, you will be taken to the main page for the group and can fiddle around with settings. For example, if you go to ‘Subscription’ (in the left hand menu column), you can choose if you receive individual messages, a full featured digest of up to 12 messages together as one email, a daily summary, or special notices.

Who moderates the email list and the directory?
The site and email list are moderated by Erica Smith, Caf Fean, and Jonathan Ingram.
Where is the email list hosted?
The list is hosted on groups.io which is a new group email platform designed by Mark Fletcher who created ONElist in 1998 (which became Yahoo Groups two years later) and then left to follow other ideas, and is now creating an up-to-date version. This is a self-funded platform and integrates well with other services like Dropbox, Instagram, etc.They are testing the service and amending it all the time.

Can I promote my political party on Hastings Creatives?
No, we do not entertain political discourse here – only creative conversations are allowed.
Can I sell my mattress / kitchen sink / duvet / dog on Hastings Creatives?
No, we are not a sales platform. Please use other sites such as Next Door or Facebook for this.
What kinds of discussions take place in the email group?
We talk about events, activities, job opportunities, funding, skills needed, projects and studio spaces available for rent. (This is our one concession to sales, as it’s important to support the creative community by providing space for us to work, and letting others know about it).

What’s allowed on or not…

Why are posts about housing allowed? I moved here in spring 2002 – an economic migrant from Brighton. I was very aware that the high rents in a town make it hard for creatives to live there (I think we all know that most creatives actually don’t earn even an average salary, even though some earn shed-loads of dosh).
I have always allowed posts about accommodation – in the hope that cutting out letting agents and estate agents helps keep rents (and house prices) low and builds a REAL community where people liaise with each other, not via a business keen to extract huge deposits and cream off managing fees.

That’s why I still allow posts about housing. It’s “my list” and that’s my peccadillo.

Furniture, computer programs, removal companies to courier art or move challenging creative items like printing presses / pianos / plan chests / paint (all the Ps… and more… like books and magazines) are allowed if they are to do with running a creative business. Other stuff can be posted on Hastings Give and Takery or Marketplace or Nextdoor or Freegle. It’s pretty obvious to work out if you really should post something to HC or dispose of it elsewhere.

Campaigns – if there is a creative element to a campaign then it’s allowed.
I can’t remember if the recent exhibition at Stade Hall of artwork and poems by Palestinian children was posted to this list, but it would not have been wrong to do that. When I was a member of the Labour Party I organised an exhibition of art and a poetry night at the Ellen Draper Centre. Posting about that to this list caused antagonism from at least one member, I recall – but it was a creative post. If I’d been posting about a political discussion about Keir Starmer or Jeremy Corbyn, I’d have posted to another email group – unless, possibly, it was a local book launch by a political author – books and publishing are part of the creative industries.

Breathwork and bodywork courses
This is as borderline as it gets… When people post about things like breathing classes and sound baths (and sex programs), I do encourage them to put the purpose of the course into a creative context.
e.g. Gabriel Lewry’s amazing Wednesday lunchtime sound baths (currently at Royal Victoria Hotel, 12.30 sharp) which she doesn’t promote on this list but would be absolutely acceptable to post about. She sings, she creates extraordinary experimental music – it’s like lying down and having the BBC Radiphonic Workshop perform just for you.
Even breath work and yoga (and sex) can be incredibly creative and inspirational practices… but I will email Jo and ask her to be creative rather than explicit about the courses she runs.

Cookery/gardening… beyond the pale – there was a relatively recent controversial post (a man who ran a course showing people how to skin and cook a deer). I know this really upset some people and his post was not well worded and was quite explicit. Again, it was borderline as to whether it should have been posted at all, but there was an element of performance in the description of the process. I asked him to be more careful about how to promote his courses if he was to post in the future – he’s basically a forager and I don’t think anyone would have objected to him posting about a foraging course if it had been using local plants and seafood. Maybe I should just make a definite NO COOKING, NO GARDENING rule… they are creative, but so is hair-dressing and I think that might be a bit beyond the limit. Creative make-up for film / theatre is, however, absolutely on topic.