Step into Lemons, Laws and Secret Doors, an exhibition exploring the queer histories of Hastings through community memory, archival research and lived experience.

Created by the Hastings Queer History Collective, it brings together archival material, personal objects and new work shaped by their research, including film, fashion, sound, multimedia installation and commissioned artworks.

What has been hidden? What has survived?

Rooted in the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people living in the town today, the exhibition refuses to separate past from present. The Collective are not separate from the queer heritage they foreground. They are part of it, shaping how these stories are told now.

There is no single way to be queer. There is no single queer Hastings. The exhibition gathers fragments of lives shaped by coded language, changing laws, hidden places and the everyday acts that sustained community - not as a final answer, but as one moment in an ongoing story of Hastings’ queer histories.

Alongside the exhibition, an Activities and Events Programme runs throughout - see below for details