Pride 2023 photograph ©JJ Waller

Hastings will have no Pride this August

On the same weekend as a mighty successful TransPride festival was celebrated in Hastings, and Queer on the Pier was held on Saturday night, the organisers of Hastings Pride released a statement saying that there would be no Hastings Pride on August Bank Holiday weekend. One of the Pride Directors, Anton Burton Windsor, shares his statement below:

It is with a heavy heart and after exploring all options that our board of Directors has to make the sad announcement that the 2024 Hastings Pride Festival at the Oval and parade have to be cancelled due to a considerable funding and sponsorship deficit.
It has been a year like no other:

A main funder changed their criteria making us ineligible to apply this time, while other funds were no longer available or considerably reduced. Sponsorship has been almost non-existent and despite trying for numerous other funding pots and reaching out to businesses until the 11th hour we must make our decision now to avoid penalties on both infrastructure and acts so they can find alternative work.
Our situation was further exacerbated this year as a previous event partner (a local businessman) took income from the bar amounting to several thousands of pounds, leaving a considerable hole in our funds for this year. We have been working with our other partners from last year to get the deficit sorted out, in addition to trying to get the money back which is owed to Hastings Pride. Without this unseen distraction we would have been in a comfortable position financially at the start of this year’s fundraising programme.

We would like to reassure our community that this decision has not been taken lightly, all possibilities have been explored but the current financial deficit is something that none of our directors are in a financial position to gamble on. We had already worked hard to successfully reduce the event costs by 33% but after careful consideration, public safety responsibilities, costs etc and after consultation with the local statutory authority we have concluded that the event for 2024 will unfortunately be cancelled in its entirety.

We understand that this will be a great disappointment to our local community (as it is to us) but please rest assured we have left no stones unturned, and this disappointing result does seem to be echoed across many events across the country.

We would like to thank our sponsors so far for their ongoing support, whose contributions are invaluable and will be carried forward to make Hastings Pride 2025 a great success.

Also in: One Long Party