Written by Paul Worrall
Every other city guide I write, I’m researching from a distance — Norwich, Southampton, Bath, places I’ve genuinly never set foot in or only passed through once on the way to a ferry. Blackpool is different. I live in Poulton-le-Fylde, a few miles up the road, and this town is woven into more of my life and my family’s than almost anywhere else I could write about.
My dad was a sign maker his entire working life, and a fair chunk of what makes Blackpool’s seafront actually look like Blackpool came out of his work. He started using Illustrator back when it ran on a Macintosh SE — the screen barely bigger than a paperback book — and used it to design the Pepsi sign on Blackpool Tower, with the Fanta sign following onto the tower a few years later, the Sandcastle sign, the North Pier sign which is still up today, and the Mr B’s sign on the amusement arcade along the prom, among others most people in the town would recognise without ever knowing who made them.
I followed a similar path myself, just with pixels instead of vinyl. I spent nearly a decade as Digital Marketing Manager at ARTdiscount, one of the UK’s largest online art retailers — based right here in Blackpool, with a warehouse and offices on Charnley Road where I did more or less everything from email design to product photography in a basement we’d rigged up as a makeshift studio. ARTdiscount was acquired by Jacksons Art in April this year and the Blackpool operation as a standalone entity is gone now, but I learned the entire art supplies industry inside that building. And more recently, this town even features in one of my own side projects — AlreadyRanked, where I built and ranked electricianblackpool.co.uk to position one for “emergency electrician Blackpool” as a proof of concept.
So when I write a Blackpool guide, it’s genuinly personal in a way none of my other city guides are. I now run Discount Art Supplies — a price comparison platform used by over 36,000 UK artists every week — and here’s the honest picture of what the town actually offers anyone looking for art supplies today.
1. The Strand Collective
The Strand Collective is genuinly the most exciting recent addition to Blackpool’s creative scene — describing itself as Blackpool’s art supplies shop and Makers’ Space, covering photography, film, cameras, paint, ceramics and clay all under one roof. The Makers’ Space concept in particular is exactly the kind of thing a town like Blackpool has been missing — a place that’s part supplies shop, part creative community hub, rather than just a retail unit. For anyone working across mixed media, or wanting access to proper photography and ceramics facilities alongside conventional art supplies, this is a genuinly significant new resource for the town.
2. Hobbycraft Blackpool
The honest version of Hobbycraft, consistent with every city guide I write: not specialist, not deep in professional-grade range, but genuinly useful for what it is. Hobbycraft Blackpool sits at the Blackpool Retail Park on Squires Gate Lane and covers the usual broad range of art and craft materials, kids’ supplies and seasonal kits. Club members currently get 20% off selected art supplies, and free Click and Collect over £10 makes it an easy top-up stop alongside a bigger shopping trip.
Check our Hobbycraft discount code guide before visiting for any current codes.
3. The Works
The honest version of The Works, as I’ve said in other city guides: not specialist, not deep in range, but genuinly useful for what it is. Canvases, starter paint sets, sketchbooks, pencils, colouring books and craft kits at prices that make experimenting affordable. Worth knowing that The Works stopped selling online nationally back in March, so the Blackpool branch — like every other store — is now purchase-in-person only. For parents, teachers and anyone wanting to try a new medium without significant financial commitment, it serves a real purpose.
4. Goldenfish Gallery
Not a supplies shop, but worth including for what it represents about Blackpool’s creative community beyond the obvious tourist trade. Goldenfish is a small independent gallery specialising in original art and bespoke picture framing, stocking limited edition prints from contemporary artists alongside original works, and not tied to any single publisher or supplier — which means genuinly considered curation rather than a generic print shop. For framing specifically, having a proper independent option in the town rather than relying solely on chains is a genuine asset.
A Note on Art Supplies in Blackpool
Blackpool doesn’t get talked about as a creative town nearly as often as it should, and having grown up around it I’ll admit a degree of bias here — but the substance is genuinly there if you look past the seafront amusements. An exciting new Makers’ Space concept, a considered independent gallery doing real framing and curation work, alongside the inevitable Hobbycraft and Works. For a town this size, that’s a reasonable spread, even before you get into the fact that this was the home of one of the UK’s largest online art retailers for the best part of two decades, and a town whose actual seafront signage was designed by working artists using the same software thousands of people reading this site use every day.
For professional-grade materials and the best current UK prices across all major art retailers, Discount Art Supplies compares prices in real time so you always find the best deal before buying anywhere.
