Hastings Fat Tuesday Music Festival - how they put the pandemic to good use

They used the time to rethink, to consolidate and to expand. The result is that they are in excellent shape as they launch into the 2023 festival.

They are promising five days of music, mayhem and Mardi Gras across Hastings and St Leonards from February 17-21, a townwide celebration presenting more than 350 free gigs, gatherings, parties and parades alongside ticketed events, with internationally acclaimed artists from across the globe appearing alongside a wealth of local bands. More details on Hastingsfattuesday.co.uk

Sally Lampitt, director of Hastings Fat Tuesday, is delighted with the position they find themselves in: “When it became clear at the end of 2020 and at the beginning of 2021 that we were not going to be able to have a festival we put a proposal to Arts Council England for us to be able to repurpose their funding, and that enabled us to be a little bit more strategic and to build our capacity within the organisation and also to pilot a lot of our community engagement activities so actually it was really quite a pivotal time for us in a way. That meant that we were able to bring (general manager) Hannah (Deeble) on board and we were able to develop the organisation so that we weren't just cemented around a one-off festival that happened once a year but there was much more throughout the year.”

“Hastings Fat Tuesday started over 13 years ago and it was founded by a guy called Bob Tipler. Bob was in a band called Cajun Dawgs and he was always looking for opportunities for his band to play and for others to play. So he came up with this idea of having some other bands along to play which he would babysit all around the time of Mardi Gras which is Shrove Tuesday. When you translate Mardi Gras it just means Fat Tuesday and really it's the feast before you go into Lent. It's the last opportunity to have a bit of a blast though I think the original idea was more to do with the seasons. It is the winter ending and spring springing. The whole thing started off fairly slowly to begin with. There were a few years when there were just a few bands but gradually it has grown to become the five-day festival it is now. Bob met up with Adam who is our technical and creative producer and had worked on major projects and they set about creating a bit more of an event.” As Hannah says: “It is a real mix of music. Hastings always had a very long history as a musical place. There are lots of artists that play down here and it has been cited as one of the most musical towns in the UK. It was an opportunity to showcase all the fantastic local talent but also to offer a platform for other people to come in and show what they can do.”

And all at the time of year when we perhaps need fun more than ever, as Sally explains: “It's linked with Mardi Gras so that is that reason for being in February but it's also because it's the time when venues might struggle a bit more to attract a crowd and when things are just a bit low for people. Traditionally it is when it's all rather dark and dingy and rainy. So really the whole festival is a chance to give everyone a bit of a boost, a really great opportunity.”