Welcome to the University of East Hastings, not a formal institution but more a school of thought and experience, it is a state of being human that we intend to celebrate with you.

We are not elitist’s, our artist’s are part of the workers collective and our work for the most part is seen and heard but goes unacknowledged, like many people’s efforts these days. Our work is seen on people’s clothing, on their signage, their electricity boxes and banners. It is seen and heard in advertisements and promotions, in our pubs and eateries, even on the street outside the liquor stores and on special occasions you will find us in books and on albums. Sometimes we prosper, sometimes we go without and have to take on extra menial work to take care of our loved ones. Despite the hardship still we go on because as human beings struggling to overcome our obstacles and better ourselves is perfectly natural and healthy.

In truth though we must take a look around and see what is for ourselves and discover the complex reality we all exist and are meant to participate fully in together.

It is the education we receive from success and failure, from love and rejection, from the very act of caring about your community or not caring that defines us all individual and collectively.

Our education comes from the day to day toil and struggle to put food on our tables and keep roofs over our families heads. From navigating the streets and communities, from interacting with others and learning through experience and with courage, sometimes we fail, sometimes we are knocked to our knees but we always pull ourselves up again and struggle on.

If anything catches your eye clicking the image will take you to our store.

We are artificially disenfranchised from each other on a daily bases for ridiculous superficial and sometimes fictional reasons created by spin doctors of the lowest order. They pathetically bully and torment people constantly into feeling ashamed of the very skin that we were born into in order to boost themselves economically with no concern for the people they are effecting or the harm they are causing to others. However in reality for the majority of us we are all individual units that work together in incredibly brilliant ways as part of our highly sophisticated and functioning societies.

To be made to feel inferior or wrong because of who you are and how you were born is the great wrong, for we are all utterly amazing and incredible creatures with so much potential, much like our ancestors were. We would not exist if they did not, and they were amongst the survivors of the masses who did not make it. Be proud of your ancestors, and believe in yourself again for the work you do, for the entertainment you love, for being yourself, for being a normal human being and comfortable with who you are, and stand with the  ancestors who created you.