The past two years has seen Newhaven dive into a fresh ‘rejuvenation plan’ seeing colourful artwork and redesigned business fronts pop up along the High Street. Here Nathan Woolgar finds the stories behind these changes, exploring the viewpoints of a previous Young Mayor, as well as the business behind the art.
Newhaven is a town with a very mixed reception over the years, for much of this time the small seaside town’s centre was all but forgotten about, overshadowed by the port and fishing culture as well as the ferry service to Dieppe. Amongst all this Newhaven had become at best a short stop in between A and B, stuck between the larger cities of Eastbourne and Brighton, or a pitstop on the way to or from France.
In recent years, a large amount of funding has seen efforts made to bring some life and colour to the High Street, plain brick walls became covered in public artwork, abandoned buildings slowly started becoming thriving businesses, and locals gained a hometown hub once again.
Despite this, the debates still ring around the town about whether Newhaven has benefitted from this at all, to gain a deeper insight into the Council’s inner workings, I spoke to a previous Young Mayor of Newhaven, Huey Cripps, who has this to say:
“So, in recent years, Newhaven Town Council received five million pounds to rejuvenate the town centre, and that’s what we can see with the new building for the new doctor’s surgery. There’s a lot more shops and other things to do in Newhaven now. I think that’s important to bring people back towards the town centre, help build a bit more of a sense of community and rather than just relying on pubs and a few small shops to kind of run that economy.
“I think that in terms of redevelopment, it’s great bringing in new shops and new businesses to the town centre. I think that’s great, but I think the environment itself needs a bit of work. Personally, I think that the area is fairly run down a lot of the time. It’s quite untidy and unclean. I think to make it more of a family friendly space, it needs to be cleaner, a lot more aesthetic and have a bit more of a community feel to it than it currently does.”
One of the largest talking points around Newhaven is the lack of places for the town’s youth to spend their time, during the summer this is more important than ever to give children, teenagers, and young adults something to do and keep them from partaking in antisocial activities.
“My focus as young mayor was on the youth of Newhaven. So that’s looking for new youth engagement and future developments to help benefit the youth in the town,” Huey said; “I’d say that Newhaven has a bad reputation because previously and historically there hasn’t been a lot of things for youth to do. They get bored. Newhaven is a working port town, we have the ferry, it’s very based off fishing and industry. There hasn’t been a lot of focus for youth.
“I think to make it more of a family friendly space, it needs to be cleaner, a lot more aesthetic and have a bit more of a community feel to it than it currently does.”
The biggest change to the High Street in decades in terms of pure aesthetics is undoubtedly the new art murals, adding plenty of colour to a town that desperately needed it.
To delve into the story behind the new artwork around the seaside town, I spoke to Anthony Peters, Co-Founder of Look Again Newhaven, the company responsible for the art.
In an exclusive interview for this feature Anthony said this:
“Look Again is a joint project between myself and Charlotte Parsons. The two of us work together and have done since originally 2018 when we ran a project called the Festival of Belonging, a day festival at the Newhaven Fort.
“We decided in 2024 to pitch to the council for a mural festival, and that was our first major project together, and it featured artists from across the UK, creating 13 murals in the town.”
There was plenty of debate when the public got to see these murals, with some locals claiming the art didn’t serve a purpose or benefit the future of the town in any way, while others appreciated the colour and vibrancy they brought into a previously dull area, especially through the summer months.
“They brought in tens of thousands more people to the town each weekend” Anthony stated; “Now the problem at that point was that there weren’t really too many offerings in the town, unfortunately. There weren’t many places for footfall to go, for people to spend their money or stay when they came here.”
“There was an issue, and there still kind of is, with people being brought to one side of the town instead of the town centre. Charlotte and I, we firmly believe actually the town centre is where we’d love to put more of our focus, but there’s not a lot of funds available for that, or at least there wasn’t then.”
“I think we’ve helped create a more positive image of a town that has loads going for it anyway,” Anthony claimed proudly; “Even before any of this stuff happened, we’ve got a lighthouse, the cliffs, the nature reserve. We’ve got the marina, the walk along the river, the sea and the beaches, We’re just an embarrassment of riches, in my opinion.”