About We Are Sussex
We Are Sussex is a civic infrastructure for creative practitioners across the region.
Creative practice thrives on connection, opportunity, and genuine support. Yet too many artists, makers, designers, and craftspeople across Sussex work in isolation—juggling practice with survival, missing peers who understand their world, unaware of the opportunities that exist.
We Are Sussex exists to change that.
What We Do
We're building the infrastructure creative practitioners need to sustain and grow their work:
A Connected Community
Our directory connects makers, artists, designers, and creative practitioners across Sussex, helping you find peers, collaborators, mentors, and opportunities. It's not a portfolio site. It's a network built for real professional relationships.
Professional Development
Through events, workshops, and forums, we create space for practitioners to develop business skills, discuss the economics of creative work, and build the knowledge that helps practice endure.
The Creative Hardship Fund
We believe creative workers deserve support in crisis. Our fund provides emergency financial assistance to practitioners facing genuine hardship—illness, loss of income, unexpected circumstances.
Events & Collaboration
From regular practitioner meetups to curated professional forums to artist-led projects, we create moments where the creative community gathers, learns, and builds together.
Advocacy
We work to make Sussex a better place for creative practice—connecting practitioners with funding opportunities, institutional partnerships, and the voices of decision-makers.
Why Sussex, Why Now
Sussex has a rich creative heritage. The modernist artists who shaped the region's cultural identity, from Eric Ravilious to Peggy Angus, built their practice through community, place, and serious professional commitment. That tradition matters. Today's practitioners deserve the same foundations.
The creative economy is real, but it's fragile. Practitioners often work without the peer networks, professional development, or financial security that other professions take for granted. We Are Sussex is here to change that—to make it possible to build a sustainable creative practice in a community that values it.
Part of a Bigger Movement
We Are Sussex is part of WEARE, a national civic infrastructure initiative rolling out across the UK. We operate as an independent community interest company in Sussex, connected to a growing network of practitioners and organisations supporting creative work across the country.
Our Values
For practitioners, by practitioners. We're built with and for the creative community—not imposed from above.
Real support, not hype. We focus on genuine professional development, peer connection, and honest conversation about the economics of creative work.
Rooted in place. We celebrate Sussex's creative heritage and work to build the conditions for today's makers to thrive here.
Community over competition. We believe creative practitioners are stronger together than apart.
