We are a group of Whitstable artists at every stage of the journey, from those who picked up a brush for the first time a couple of years ago to those who have been painting for over a decade. What we share is not a style or a background but a genuine passion for making, a willingness to keep learning, and a belief that the best thing you can do with that is show the work.
Our first exhibition brings together painting in oils and acrylics alongside work in other media, representing the full range of what this group makes and who we are. Subjects, styles and influences vary enormously across the collective, which is exactly the point.
The exhibition runs from 26 August to 7 September 2026 at the Horsebridge Arts Centre, Whitstable. To celebrate we are having a party and you are all invited. Save the date in your diary for Tuesday 2 September from 6.30pm and meet the artists behind the work.
Come and see what happens when a group of people decide, at whatever age and stage, that they are going to make something and show it to the world.
26 August to 7 September 2026 at the Horsebridge Arts Centre, Whitstable
Meet our Artists
Most of our artists experienced having their own portrait taken at the Shelter on Tankerton Slopes. T S Elliot wrote Wastelands in a shelter looking out at the same grey green water.
We're not claiming to spy on genuis but we do recognise that feeling: artists emerging from their usual lives to do something a little scary and see their work come to life.
About Us
The Whitstable Creative Collective began the way most good things in this town begin: with a group of people who found each other, liked what they found, and decided to do something about it.
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We are nearly forty artists, most of us drawn together through a shared weekly painting class, all of us living and working in and around Whitstable. Very few of us came from an art background. Some of us had never picked up a brush before we started. What we share is not a style or a technique or a particular vision of what art should be. What we share is the experience of discovering, later in life and largely by accident, that we could make something beautiful.
Whitstable has always had that effect on people. It attracts those who make things, who value the handmade and the human, who are drawn to a place where the light is particular and the community is tight and the ordinary details of life feel worth paying attention to. The collective grew out of that spirit. We are not professionals presenting finished careers. We are people in the middle of something, showing the work we have made so far and inviting you to see where we have got to.
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Our first exhibition, Moment of Discovery: Whitstable's Hidden Artists, opens at the Horsebridge Arts Centre on 26 August 2026 and runs until 7 September.
It is the first time most of us have shown work publicly. It will not be the last.
The collective is open to anyone with a curiosity about making art and a connection to this town. We are building something ongoing: exhibitions, content, conversations about art and what it means to make things as an ordinary person in an extraordinary place.