Arts festival launches with a Random Friday

The seafront venue was already busy with crowds enjoying the latest Random Friday evening when buses carrying people from the festival reception in Hastings Town Hall arrived.

At dusk, Madarms, a group of friends who met in 2005, performed Tentation on the bandstand patio.

The balcony filled with cheerful onlookers, six tents writhed about below, breeding, mutating and consuming. The group did well, especially fighting high winds and ignoring the odd errant cyclist.

The top floor was taken over by Michele D'Acosta's excellent documentary, The Prince of Hip Hop, which was projected onto the back wall whilst Riz MC and his skillful beatboxing DJ Evil Ed held crowds outside Gallery Two.

Outside the Joseph Beuys exhibition in Gallery One, sequined performance art trio Tit-Tat hosted a disco olympics, with the public competing closely in events like the martini relay and sock wrestling.

Lorna Crabbe, who organised the Coastal Currents festival with Sarah Yates, was carrying flowers on the evening.

She said: "I'm relieved it all came together. Quite an ambitious double launch, but I think it really worked out well.

"I've been to a couple of the Random Friday events before, the last one, with Thomas Truax was amazing. I think it's a great idea, and I hope they carry on. It's the same kind of fusion of art, performance and fun that we have tried for with Coastal Currents.

The theme of this year's festival is Hidden Hastings, chosen by Lorna and Sarah. Lorna said: "Hastings has been recognised as a creative place for a while, with a significant artists' population - this is the 10th year of the festival already.

"But a lot of work has been quite hidden in the past, and we really wanted to bring out the excitement of what is happening, and bring it together in a proper, coordinated way."

Laura Ducceschi, as head of live programming for the Pavilion, is responsible for organising the Random Friday nights.

Speaking at the launch, she spoke of her hopes to bring more music into a venue primarily based around the visual arts, including plans to take the Heritage Orchestra, a mixture of composers and musicians who work with artists from the mainstream as well experimental realms, into residency at the Pavilion from November.

She said: "It's a venue for contemporary art, so there is a huge opportunity to do something. The space is an absolute dream, and within a contemporary art venue music is approached as an art form. All the musicians that we work with are what I would call artists, people like Goldfrapp and Mark Lannegan.

"It's a combination of giving people a space to relax and chill out, and giving artists a space to try new work out. It's very much about innovation and experimentation.

"In the time that we live in there are very few organisations that have an art and music program. Most places receive work rather than go out and seek it.

"You can either follow trends or you can lead them."

For more information on this year's Coastal Currents arts festival, including a full programme of events, please visit www.coastalcurrents.org.uk