About Hexham Focus | Your Independent Community Guide
Hexham Focus is a weekly guide to what's happening in and around town — the events, the dining, the local businesses, the artists, the deals, and the odd bit of history or trivia along the way. Think of it as a friendly nudge every week about what's worth knowing in Hexham, nothing more complicated than that.
What We're Not
To be clear about what this is: Hexham Focus isn't news, and it isn't political. You won't find council debates, planning rows, or opinions on anything remotely controversial here. There are other places for that. This is simply a celebration of the town — its people, its shops, its events, its little corners worth knowing about.
For the Whole Town, Not One Part of It
Hexham is more than any one street, any one crowd, any one type of business. This site aims to reflect that. It's not built around one part of town, one social circle, or one kind of business over another — a market stall gets the same welcome as an established shop, a first-time event organiser the same as a long-running one. If you're part of Hexham, you belong here.
Free for Everyone, Always
Every business, artist, and event organiser is welcome to be featured — completely free, no exceptions:
- Appearing in the Spotlight, Dining Pick, What's On, or Deals section never costs anything.
- Small or established, brand new or decades old — everyone gets the same welcome.
- Being featured has nothing to do with paying to be here.
Who's Behind It
Hexham Focus is put together by a small team of local volunteers — Mike, Ginny, Dom and Alana — all Hexham residents who wanted to give something back to the town they live in. Dom handles the website build, hosting and ongoing maintenance, while Mike, Ginny and Alana help pull together the content, research and copy each week.
Running the site isn't free, so we rely on sponsors to help cover hosting and running costs. In return, sponsors get a banner on the site and their own dedicated sponsor page — that's the extent of what sponsorship buys. It has no bearing on the free, editorial side of the site: the Spotlight, Dining Pick, What's On, and Deals sections aren't for sale, and sponsors don't get preferential treatment there.
Worth flagging directly: Dom is also connected to Little Spectacle Shop, an independent Hexham optician's run by his son Harry — currently one of the site's sponsors. Little Spectacle Shop has a sponsor banner and page like any other sponsor, but in the interest of keeping things above board, it doesn't appear in the Business Spotlight or any other editorial slot.
Want to Be Featured, or Get Involved?
If you run a business, know an artist worth spotlighting, are organising an event, have a deal to share, want to join the sponsors, or fancy donating a prize toward one of our regular giveaways, get in touch — it takes two minutes and costs nothing.
Spot Something Wrong?
We do our best to keep everything accurate, but we're only human. If you spot an error, let us know at hello@hexhamfocus.co.uk and we'll fix it.