Culture And Memory

Discover, Celebrate, Grow

With NLHF funding and support over 16 months, the Discover, Celebrate, Grow project will bring hidden histories of Eastbourne’s lesser known seaside residential communities to life through community-led research, creative partnerships with local amenity societies, storytelling, oral histories and resident responses, which will culminate in a ‘Seaside Road’ heritage exhibition at our Volt Gallery space in 2026. The project will further develop Devonshire Collective’s work as a burgeoning creative heritage organisation, working against the tide of losses across Eastbourne’s other heritage infrastructure over the past 3 years. Local working-class residents, workers and businesses who do not normally participate in heritage will be empowered to do so by working with contemporary artists and local heritage groups. They will co-develop creative approaches for the community to rediscover the historic high street and wider Devonshire Ward’s heritage and hidden histories, and be given the agency to tell their own stories.