Joel Cheshire, Author at DLWP, The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, East Sussex

De La Warr Pavilion Unveils New Auditorium Seating

After a period of temporary seating, the auditorium now has brand-new removable seats, arriving as work gets underway on An Icon For Everyone, the transformation project that is helping to secure the future of our Grade I-listed modernist landmark.

When the Pavilion opened its doors in 1935, the auditorium was conceived as an ‘entertainment hall’, with removable seats that allowed the space to adapt for dances, balls, exhibitions and performances. In that way it was unique. Ninety years on, the flexibility remains.

From these seats, audiences have watched and listened to artists including Bob Marley, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Keane, Clean Bandit, Example, Eddie Izzard, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Mac DeMarco, Alan Carr, Dionne Warwick, Adam Ant, Joan Armatrading, Gary Numan, Frank Turner and Rag’n’Bone Man, alongside hundreds of community and school productions over the decades.

Now, a new generation of seats is ready to become part of that history. The new seats have been manufactured by Audience Systems, a leading UK designer, manufacturer and installer of specialist seating. They have been crafted to complement the Pavilion’s historic interiors, with walnut veneer backs echoing the auditorium’s original woodwork. The seats are upholstered in bespoke fabric woven by Bute Fabrics on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, close to the Rothesay Pavilion.

And there’s an opportunity to leave your own mark on the Pavilion, too. Through the Your Seat in History campaign, supporters can name a new auditorium seat. Whether you want to celebrate a special memory, honour a loved one or demonstrate your support for the Pavilion’s future, each engraved plaque will become part of the building’s story for years to come.

Name your seat today: www.dlwp.com/your-seat-in-history

This forms part of An Icon For Everyone, the Pavilion’s major transformation project, delivered in partnership with Rother District Council and designed by award-winning architects Haworth Tompkins, recently shortlisted for the 2026 RIBA Stirling Prize.

The project has been developed in consultation with local communities and will restore and improve this pioneering centre for the arts. The programme will create new learning and community spaces, refurbish the auditorium and galleries, improve accessibility, support environmental sustainability and secure the Pavilion’s purpose as a creative and cultural home for all.

Work began earlier this year, and there are already some important milestones to celebrate.

Roof repairs are now complete, 144 solar panels have been installed, and the long-awaited piano lift has been brought back into operation. Restoration of the Pavilion’s iconic staircase glazing is also now underway.

Throughout the works, the Pavilion will remain open. Some areas of the building will have restricted access and routes will change during different phases of the project, with information about what is open and how to visit available on the Pavilion’s website throughout the works.

Designed by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, with innovative engineer Felix Samuely, the De La Warr Pavilion opened in 1935 and is recognised as one of the UK’s most important modernist buildings.

Grade I-listed since 1986, it has become an internationally significant cultural building, presenting contemporary arts, live music, skills and learning programmes.

The Pavilion has welcomed more than 7 million visitors since 2005, while more than 11,000 people take part in creative learning activities each year. Since 2023, it has also supported more than 10,000 young people and employers with creative careers opportunities.

For more than 90 years, the Pavilion has survived as both a national cultural landmark and a vital local lifeline. An Icon For Everyone is about ensuring that continues for generations to come.

The project is made possible through the De La Warr Pavilion’s partnership with Rother District Council and the generous support of the UK Government, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Wolfson Foundation, Garfield Weston Foundation, The Chalk Cliff Trust, Foyle Foundation and Suzy Eddie Izzard.

It is also a key part of Transforming Heritage. Powering Community, a UK Government-funded partnership between Heart of Sidley, De La Warr Pavilion and Rother District Council, working together to create opportunities, inspire pride of place and strengthen community life across Bexhill and Sidley.

In the wake of the cut: researching Gordon Matta-Clark in New York and New Hampshire

In preparation for the winter exhibition opening in October, our Head of Visual Arts, Ned McConnell, travelled to New York for research and reported back.

There are artists you think you know from reproduction, and then there is the encounter with the thing itself, which quietly rearranges everything. Gordon Matta-Clark has been such an artist for me. This summer, ahead of Gordon Matta-Clark: Discrete Violations, opening in our First Floor Gallery on 10 October 2026, I travelled to New York and then north to New Hampshire to spend time with the work at close range and to test, against the evidence, the ideas that will shape the exhibition.

The first days were spent at David Zwirner, where a body of Matta-Clark’s photographs and film-strips of building-cut works had been laid out for study. It is one thing to describe, in a text, how Matta-Clark turned the demolition of a building into a kind of drawing in space; it is another to stand in front of the spliced and layered photo-collages and feel how deliberately composed that apparent violence is. Held to the light, the work reveals a maker who was always thinking about the frame, the section, the seam. Selecting from this material, deciding what a Bexhill audience should encounter first, and how one image might speak to the next, is the quiet, unglamorous heart of curating, and there is no substitute for doing it in the room. My thanks to the team at David Zwirner for their time and for such generous access.

From the city I went out to the artist’s estate in New Hampshire, where Jane Crawford and Jessamyn Fiore welcomed me and shared the archive with real generosity. To sit with the proposals, plans, correspondence and the offcuts of a life’s practice is to be reminded that Matta-Clark’s cuts were never only destructive. They were speculative, even tender, a way of opening architecture up rather than obeying it, of asking what a building conceals and who it excludes. Spending time with Odd Lots and the Fake Estates material, those slivers of unusable New York land he bought and catalogued, I was struck again by how much of his thinking turns on ownership, waste and the overlooked, questions that feel newly urgent as we approach our own reopening and think hard about who our building is for.

I came home with a notebook full of connections I could not have made from a desk in Sussex, and with a clearer sense of the exhibition’s shape: not a retrospective, but an argument about attention, structure and the things we choose to keep or tear down.

This research would not have been possible without the support of the Art Fund Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant, whose funding allows curators the time and travel that serious exhibition-making requires. I am enormously grateful to Art Fund, to David Zwirner, and to Jane Crawford and Jessamyn Fiore at the estate, and I look forward to sharing what it has made possible when Discrete Violations opens in October.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION HERE

Seated, Serendipity And What Public Sculpture Can Do

Tschabalala Self’s Seated has stood on the lawn of the De La Warr Pavilion since 2023. It is a bronze figure three metres high, a woman in a yellow dress and sunhat, seated in her chair and looking out to the Channel. It was Self’s first public sculpture, originally presented at Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross, London. Here, anyone walking along the seafront comes across it without planning to. There is no ticket, no gallery, no wall text.

This is the main thing public sculpture does that a gallery cannot. Inside, people choose to look at art: they decide to visit and arrive ready for it. Outside, a work has to reach people who were not looking for it: someone walking a dog, a family heading to the beach, a passenger waiting for a bus. Most of them did not set out to see a sculpture. Public art depends on that kind of chance encounter, and often means more to people because it was unexpected.

A woman poses next to a bronze statue of a woman wearing a yellow dress and a wide-brimmed hat, with bright yellow lips against a blue sky with clouds. — Photo Credit: OBSERVER (c) Lineker Photography

Seated makes a good case for this. Self takes an ordinary act, sitting down, taking up space, looking at the view, and gives it the scale and permanence of a monument. The figure is not performing for anyone. She is simply there, at ease, and that ease invites everyone else to feel they have a right to the same space. When the sculpture was defaced in 2023, more than three hundred people came to the lawn to help clean and restore it. A work nobody had bought a ticket for had plainly become the town’s own.

This autumn gives the point a much bigger stage. On 10 September, Self’s Lady in Blue will be unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, the sixteenth commission there since the programme began. Where the Bexhill figure sits and looks out to sea, this one is walking forward: an everywoman, as Self describes her, cast in bronze and patinated with lapis lazuli, a blue long associated with the sacred. Self has said the figure is not an idol or a historical figurehead but an ordinary woman moving forward with purpose. It will stay in the square for around two years.

The two works belong together. Both step away from the traditional monument. In place of the general, the statesman, or the man on a pedestal, they put an ordinary woman in public space. Both rely on being come across rather than sought out. That is the quiet argument public sculpture makes: art belongs in the places people already move through, and being surprised by it is part of the point. If you have not yet spent a moment with Seated on the lawn, this is a good autumn to do it, and to look out for her counterpart in London.

Photo Credit: INSTALL IMAGES (c) Lineker Photography

Bexhill Art Weekender Returns for 2026

BEXHILL ART WEEKENDER RETURNS FOR 2026 WITH TOWN-WIDE CELEBRATION OF
ART, PERFORMANCE, FILM AND COMMUNITY

Featuring artists’ open studios, drop-in workshops, a Bexhill Day concert, experimental music experiences, exhibitions, film screenings, ceramic sales and a celebration of sculpture and 3D art.

15–16 August 2026

Bexhill Art Weekender returns on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 August 2026, transforming Bexhill-on-Sea into a vibrant, town-wide celebration of contemporary art, performance, music and creativity.

Now in its second edition, Bexhill Art Weekender brings together artists, cultural organisations, community groups and independent businesses across the town to present a programme of exhibitions, performances, screenings, workshops, talks and open studios. Entirely free to attend, the Weekender invites residents and visitors alike to discover Bexhill’s rich cultural ecology and experience the town as a place of creativity, experimentation and collective imagination.

This year’s festival is made possible by an extraordinary coalition of organisations across the town. Bringing together cultural institutions, artist-focused organisations, community groups, heritage organisations, youth initiatives and independent businesses, the festival offers a snapshot of a cultural ecology that is far greater than the sum of its parts. In doing so, it reveals one of the central lessons of Bexhill’s emerging cultural plan and UK Town of Culture ambition: that the town’s greatest cultural asset is its remarkable capacity for collaboration, collective imagination and quiet but continual cultural revolution.

Alongside their Summer exhibitions programme Tawfik Naas Manifestations for an Eternal Spring, and Annie Whiles Door Way Guardians, Flatland Projects will present CEREMONIA, an evening of performances celebrating the radical potential of the analogue in a digital age. Bringing together experimental music, movement and collective gathering, the programme features Bionic Step by artist Nina Davies and a special performance by the Statue of Liberty big band.

Nina Davies (b.1991) is a Canadian-British artist whose work examines the present moment through dance and popular culture, considering how movement is made, circulated, consumed and continually reproduced across contemporary media ecologies.

Devised by Ed Baxter, co-founder and former CEO of Resonance FM, Statue of Liberty is an anti-fascist big band comprising 18 musicians from diverse backgrounds who have formed a symbolic and metaphorical statue to welcome strangers to our shore. Through collective performance and public gathering, the ensemble offers an act of sonic resistance, solidarity and welcome at the edge of the nation. Statue of Liberty features i.a. Otti Albietz (Beau Flies), Matt Armstrong (Kenny Process Team), Toby Bula-Edge (The Brothers Bula), Adam Bushell (The Hauntological Orchestra), Fritz Catlin (23 Skidoo) and Anthony Moore (Slapp Happy), alongside special guests tbc.

The De La Warr Pavilion, in partnership with artist collective ZEROH, presents MASS, a one day celebration of sculpture and 3D art inspired by Tschabalala Self’s Seated, bringing together local and regional artists to showcase and sell their work. Other highlights include a Sunset Screening of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Revolver Record Fair in the auditorium, the launch of new collaborative projects with young people from Bexhill, and the Pavilion’s summer exhibition To Improvise a Mountain, a Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition from Southbank Centre curated by Turner Prize nominee Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Common Clay opens its studios for exhibitions, a ceramic sale and Queer Clay Club by resident artist Nick Kidd and Camara Pinnock, whilst hosting Clay as Class Material, a round-table discussion exploring the relationships between class, making and access to ceramic practice. The weekend will also see artist Agata Bogacka invite artists and residents to take part in the Bexhill Art Weekender Harvest Procession, a playful and participatory parade of handmade bread sculptures through the town.

Elsewhere, Do Your Ideas presents an exhibition by Anna Maria Nabirye Letter Press Works to accompany her residency at Written In Print Imprenta a new letterpress print studio in Bexhill. The studio will host long-term residencies for local artist writers and offer an annual print subscription.

Bexhill Museum presents Sovereign Shoals with artists Yasmin Ornsby; Mary Hooper a new project developed with members of the Hastings Fishermen’s Protection Society that uncovers the hidden geology, stories and histories lying beneath the waters off the Sussex coast through sound, moving image and a guided coastal walk.

New additions to Bexhill Art Weekender this year further strengthen the festival’s commitment to community participation and intergenerational exchange. Bexhill Heritage joins the programme with a free Bexhill Day concert featuring live performances from local music and theatre groups, celebrating the town’s rich cultural traditions and civic life. Meanwhile, Living Communities will present Run to Chase Your Dreams, a series of creative drop-in workshops for all ages, inviting participants to make, create and imagine together through accessible activities designed to encourage participation, connection and aspiration.

Throughout the weekend, visitors can also discover exhibitions and activities presented by Bexhill Artrium, Love Art By Sea, Living Communities, Heart of Sidley Community Association, RePublic, Peter Marlow Foundation, Refugee Buddy Project, Talent Accelerator and many others, alongside open studios at Beeching Road Studios and across the town.

Bexhill Art Weekender continues to build on Bexhill’s long and distinctive history of modernity and cultural experimentation. Through collaboration and collective participation, the Weekender seeks to tell new civic stories about the town, celebrating Bexhill as a place of quiet but continual cultural revolution and demonstrating the power of culture to connect communities, animate public life and shape new futures.

Ben Urban, Director of Flatland Projects and Chair of Bexhill Cultural Network, said:
“One of the most powerful lessons from our bid to become the 2028 UK Town of Culture has been discovering just how deeply culture is woven into Bexhill’s sense of itself. There is an enduring futurism here, a feeling that the town is always in the process of becoming. Bexhill Art Weekender is an expression of that unfinished future: a collective act of imagination that brings together artists, communities and organisations to rehearse the kind of place we want Bexhill to remain and become.”

Participating organisations include:
Flatland Projects, De La Warr Pavilion, Talent Accelerator, Bexhill Academy, Music’s Not Dead, Zeroh Studio, Common Clay, Three Legs Brewery, Do Your Ideas, Bexhill Museum, Bexhill Heritage, RePublic, Living Communities, Love Art By Sea, Heart of Sidley Community Association, Project 78, Footbridge Gallery, The Old Ambulance Station, Beeching Road Studios, Peter Marlow Foundation, Refugee Buddy Project, Bexhill Artrium and iBex Studios.

Bexhill Art Weekender 2026
Saturday 15 – Sunday 16 August 2026
Free admission

Full programme and information:
www.bexhillartweekender.com

Social Media:
@bexhillartweekender

Hops – Bexhill Returns to the 80s

Who remembers the popular “Hops” at the De La Warr Pavilion?

We’re taking a trip back in time as Bexhill seafront returns to the 1980s for one special day on 11 July. To celebrate, we’re looking back at some brilliant memories from the decade – and musician Pete Prescott has kindly shared these fabulous images of Hops with us.

We hope to have these photographs on display in our foyer on the day, helping bring the sights, sounds and stories of the 80s back to life at the Pavilion.

Were you there? Do you have memories of Hops or the De La Warr Pavilion in the 1980s? We’d love to hear from you. Share your photographs and stories with us at pavilionstories@dlwp.com – and we can help showcase them as part of the day’s celebrations.

Join us as Bexhill returns to the 80s for a nostalgic day.

Featuring the Back To The Future Delorean time machine, themed market, classic 80s vehicles, children’s entertainment and a few 80s surprises celebrating the music and style of an iconic decade.

A FREE to attend event with great live 80s music all day.

Find out more about the event here: https://www.dlwp.com/event/bexhill-returns-to-the-80s/

Things to do in East Sussex – Discover Your Next Adventure

Make the most of the British summertime by getting out and exploring the great outdoors!

East Sussex is spoiled for choice when it comes to scenic walks – from tackling the Seven Sisters and crossing the South Downs to discovering seaside towns along the Coastal Culture Trail.

Whether you’re looking for a peaceful countryside walk, a dramatic coastal adventure, or a day discovering art and culture by the sea, East Sussex offers the perfect backdrop for your next escape.

Discover the Coastal Culture Trail

One of the best ways to explore the area is by following the Coastal Culture Trail, a unique route that links three seaside towns: Eastbourne, Bexhill and Hastings.

Stretching across 20+ miles of coastline from start to finish, the trail takes you on a journey through some of East Sussex’s most beautiful landscapes. Start your adventure in either Hastings or Eastbourne, passing through Bexhill in between – home to the De La Warr Pavilion.

Take your time in each town, exploring the sights, quirky shops and art galleries such as Hastings Contemporary along the way. The Coastal Culture Trail is a great way to discover East Sussex in just a day or two which is perfect for last-minute summer trips and weekends away.

Some views and journeys stay with you long after the walking boots have come off. The route is full of inspiration, from sweeping sea views and historic architecture to the creative spirit that runs through our coastal towns.

As you pass through Bexhill, stop by the De La Warr Pavilion and take in our seafront setting. Sitting right on the Coastal Culture Trail, the Pavilion is the perfect place to pause, explore exhibitions, enjoy the view and discover the connection between art, landscape and life by the sea.

Walk and Explore

The Sussex coastline and countryside have inspired generations of artists, including Eric Ravilious, who captured the beauty of local landscapes in his work.

Whether you are taking inspiration from Ravilious and painting landscapes along the way, capturing photographs of your journey, or keeping a written record of your adventures, there’s always something new to discover.

For those heading further afield, the Seven Sisters offers one of the most iconic walks in the region, with dramatic chalk cliffs and unforgettable views across the English Channel. Meanwhile, the South Downs provides miles of peaceful countryside paths, rolling hills and open skies, great for a slower-paced adventure surrounded by nature.

Prepare for Your Next Adventure at the DLWP Shop

Before you set off, stop by the DLWP Shop, where you’ll find a range of items inspired by the beauty of Sussex and beyond, plus everything you need for your next adventure.

For our roaming artists, you can find an even wider selection of supplies when you visit our shop at the Pavilion. Browse pencils for sketching and colouring, moleskin sketch books and journals, Micron fine liner pens, watercolours and more so you can capture the places you visit.

We also have plenty of outdoorsy essentials for your next walk, including practical tote bags, reusable water bottles, walking books and guides to help you explore the local area. Plus, discover a wider selection of books, ceramics and greetings cards by local makers, along with plenty of unique and quirky finds.

Bring the beauty of the countryside and coast into your home with books inspired by a love for Sussex, or pick up a thoughtful souvenir to remember your journey.

While we do our best to showcase our products online, our full collection is best experienced in person.

And if you join as a DLWP Member at the Box Office, you’ll enjoy 10% off your shop purchases year-round, alongside a range of exclusive benefits, all while supporting the De La Warr Pavilion.

Our Shop is open daily, 10am–5pm.

London Gallery Weekend Patron Visit

A group of nine of us, including our Visual Art Patrons, Ned McConnell (Head of Visual Arts), João Conceição (Curator), Suzy Trevethan (Development Manager), and Jessica Cheetham (Head of Development), spent a brilliant day exploring London Gallery Weekend and visiting some of the city’s most exciting contemporary art galleries.

Across the day we visited exhibitions by Mark Corfield-Moore at Kate MacGarry, Ally Fallon at Hales Gallery, Russell Perkins and Shaniqwa Jarvis at Public Gallery, Candace Hill-Montgomery at Hollybush Gardens, and John Riddy at Frith Street Gallery. We also made a special visit to Phillida Reid to see an exhibition by Prem Sahib. Although this wasn’t officially part of London Gallery Weekend, it was too good an opportunity to miss.

One of the real highlights of the trip was hearing directly from several of the artists. We were fortunate to have talks from Mark Corfield-Moore, Russell Perkins, John Riddy and Prem Sahib, giving us a unique insight into their practices and the ideas behind the work on display. Having Ned and João with us throughout the day added another layer to the experience, helping to introduce the exhibitions and guiding us through them.

More than anything, the day was a chance to spend time together and enjoy contemporary art in a way that’s rarely possible. The artists and gallerists generously shared their time and knowledge, offering us special access to the exhibitions and creating opportunities for conversation that went far beyond a standard gallery visit.

It was a fun and memorable day being able to encounter a wide range of contemporary art, and a great example of the kinds of experiences available through the Visual Art Patron programme. If you’d like to enjoy exclusive visits, artist-led tours and behind-the-scenes access to some of the best contemporary art around, becoming a Visual Art Patron is a great way to get involved.

Become a Visual Art Patron

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Bexhill Residency

This summer, Bexhill is set to become the home of one of the UK’s most celebrated orchestras as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) arrives for a week-long residency as part of Bexhill’s Big Summer Sounds.

From 27 June to 4 July 2026, the town will be filled with brilliant music and community participation as the RPO brings an exciting programme of performances and creative activity to the De La Warr Pavilion.

At the heart of the residency are three major performances.

The celebrations begin on 27 June with Symphonic Groove: The Ultimate Soul & Disco Party By the Sea, an electrifying outdoor concert on a large seafront stage outside the De La Warr Pavilion. Featuring 65 members of the RPO, this spectacular event promises an evening of iconic soul and disco classics performed with the power and energy of a full symphony orchestra.

On 2 July, audiences can experience the orchestra in the Pavilion’s iconic auditorium as the RPO performs works by Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Dvořák. This special concert offers the chance to hear some of classical music’s most beloved masterpieces performed by one of the country’s leading orchestras in one of the South Coast’s most distinctive venues.

The residency culminates on 4 July with ABBAphonic: Celebrating the Music of ABBA By the Sea. Featuring 64 members of the orchestra, this outdoor concert will bring ABBA’s timeless hits to life against the backdrop of Bexhill’s seafront, creating a memorable finale to the week.

Beyond the headline performances, the residency tells a powerful story about the role music can play in bringing communities together.

On 28 June, the RPO will take part in the opening celebrations for the newly completed, fully accessible and state-of-the-art Sidley Hub. The occasion will mark a significant moment for the local community, made even more special through the involvement of local young people.

More than 100 schoolchildren from Chantry Primary School, All Saints CE Primary School and Little Common School have been working with RPO musicians in the weeks leading up to the event. Through a series of workshops designed to build not just musical skills, but creativity and confidence too. The children have been preparing for a truly unique opportunity: performing live alongside members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hub’s grand opening. Each participating school has received four dedicated workshops, helping pupils develop their musical abilities while gaining first-hand experience of working with professional orchestral musicians. For many, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience and a moment they will remember for years to come.

The residency reaches its finale on 4 July with Mega Music Saturday, a free, all-day celebration of music at the De La Warr Pavilion.

Designed for all ages, the event will transform the Pavilion into a vibrant hub of creativity and participation, with a packed programme of drop-in activities, performances and workshops. Visitors can take part in hands-on sessions with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra musicians, enjoy live performances throughout the day, create instruments from recycled materials and even vegetables, receive expert instrument advice, and experience an Orchestral Silent Disco.

One of the day’s highlights will be the Bexhill Big Singalong, inviting the entire community to come together to sing ABBA’s legendary Dancing Queen live with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. As the song celebrates 50 years since its release, the event promises a joyful and unforgettable moment by the sea.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s residency represents far more than a series of concerts. It is a celebration of what happens when world-class artists become part of a community. They will be sharing their expertise with young people and creating opportunities for everyone to take part. From spectacular performances on the seafront to meaningful engagement with local schools and community groups, Bexhill’s Big Summer Sounds promises to live up its name.

For one exciting week, Bexhill will become the home for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Now in Production: Our New Auditorium Seats

We are taking another major step forward in the An Icon for Everyone transformation project with the introduction of brand-new seating, coming later this year to the De La Warr Pavilion auditorium. This project, in partnership with Rother District Council, will refurbish and redevelop this pioneering centre for the arts by transforming/modernising the original 1935 auditorium, creating new community and learning spaces, improving accessibility and ensuring business and environmental sustainability.

These new seats, specified by architects Haworth Tompkins and innovative theatre experience consultants, Charcoal Blue, have been designed and produced by seating specialists Audience Systems, drawing on the original auditorium colour palette by Serge Chermayeff and made with walnut veneer backs to echo the original panelling in the Auditorium.

Here is a behind the scenes look at Bute Fabrics where our bespoke fabric is being woven on the Isle of Bute, Scotland. Established in 1947, Bute Fabrics specialise in weaving textured fabrics, combining time-honoured weaving techniques to create textiles that are grounded, versatile, and made to last.

Leah Harrison Bailey, the Capital Project Director said: “It’s truly wonderful to see, after months of work, that the new auditorium chairs are now in production. We are absolutely delighted to be collaborating with such prestigious partners and skilled craftspeople. It is fantastic to see Bute Fabrics bringing the seat fabric to life, and especially meaningful to maintain our connection with our sister pavilion in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute, so close to Bute Fabrics.”

The project also links to repairs to the auditorium’s stage lift, which is used to store and move seating beneath the stage during standing events and performances.

You can be part of this all. Join our Your Seat in History campaign and support the vital works to our auditorium and foyers while becoming part of its future. By donating to Your Seat in History, you can celebrate a memory, honour a loved one, or simply have your own name engraved on a plaque on the back of one of our new seats.

You can also come and test the new seats currently in our main foyer!

An Icon For Everyone is made possible through De La Warr Pavilion’s partnership with Rother District Council, and the generous support of the UK Government, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Wolfson Foundation, Garfield Weston Foundation, The Chalk Cliff Trust, Foyle Foundation, and Suzy Eddie Izzard.

Visit from Charters Towers Old Girls

Recently we welcomed the Old Girls of Charters Towers School for a trip down memory lane. The ladies were at school together in Bexhill during the early 1960s and they visited DLWP as part of a reunion gathering. The Pavilion played a large part in the lives of school girls, hosting Annual School Plays and Speech Days from 1940s – 1980s.

When Charters Towers merged with Ancaster House, the schools were previously ‘arch rivals’ according to some of the girls! It was great to hear their stories of performing on the stage. Many fondly remembered the incredible costumes and scenery which were hired from the West End, as well as the make up and false beards! Sue Fisher-Pascall recalled that Head Techer, Eileen McGarry, was always keen that as many people as possible should take part in performances, so Greek tragedies were always a favourite because of the good number required for the chorus.

It was a pleasure to show the Old Girls backstage and to let them ‘tred the boards’ at DLWP once again. They were glad to know that school children in Bexhill still attend award ceremonies at DLWP and perform on the auditorium stage with Bexhill Festival of Music, Hastings Sinfonia, SingInspiration, Diana Freedman School of Dance and East Sussex School of Dance. We hope that the DLWP stage continues to be enjoyed by the children of Bexhill for many years to come!