Our aim:
Hastings Art School is a local, accessible alternative to a traditional art school model. The aim is to provide creative development and career opportunities to artists who do not want to, or cannot attend a traditional art school.
Our core offering is a flexible 30-week programme, accessibly priced, for artists at any stage of their career who want to challenge and drive their practice in a critical, collaborative environment.
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We provide services traditionally supported through a post-grad level programme, whilst removing some of the difficulty local artists have in accessing similar programmes. There are no specific entry requirements and work with artists from any background, working in any medium.
We host practical workshops, lectures and student-led exhibitions, a dedicated arts library, and are committed to reducing some of the barriers to learning facing lots of artists in Hastings and the surrounding areas.
High-quality curriculum:
Our classes are for adults who want to develop and deepen their existing practice in a critical, collaborative environment. You don’t need any formal qualifications, and we welcome degree-level, post-grad, professional, emerging, and anyone with a committed, creative practice in any medium.
Hastings Arts School delivers an innovative and well-rounded curriculum designed to be challenging. We want to provide the best learning environment for you to develop your work and get the most out of your practice, we would like our courses to be inspiring and valuable.
Flexible schedule:
We know that perhaps the most significant barrier to higher education, aside from finance, is time. Each term is ten weeks long. Most of the practical work required for the course is self-directed and can be completed at any time during the week. Most of us can't take a full year out of our other responsibilities to attend a traditional school or are not looking to engage in full-time study. We have designed the curriculum purposefully so that if you need to take a break and return, you can do so between terms without taking a full year out of your study.
Affordable Price Tag:
It is no secret that arts education programmes can be expensive. As we are non-accredited, we can keep the price low and ensure that as many people as possible could join us!
You can pay per term or for the whole year in advance (if this is your preference, please drop us an email). We want to keep things as accessible as possible and so are committed to keeping our prices fixed throughout the course with no mid-year rises between terms.
Programme Lead
Julia is an artist who has shown both nationally and internationally, a qualified further and higher education art teacher and founder of Hastings Art School. She works across several mediums exploring relational dynamics, the dialectics of institutional selves, and the conditions of living and working as a single mother in poverty. Her work takes many forms including paper cutting, installation, relational events, performance and most recently film. She is fascinated by the social economy of digital identity and uses lots of digital ephemera, memes and short-form content in her work.
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Whilst doing her MFA at Goldsmiths Julia experienced many barriers facing artists who live and work outside of London who do not have the privilege of wealth or formal qualifications.
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