Funding for research project aimed at making Ramsgate a centre for creative businesses

7 Comments

1. This seems to be a very encouraging development . Britain’s finest painter of the first half of the last century, Walter Sickert, also lived in Thanet in the late 1930s, painting Margate Harbour, portraits, houses and allotments in Broadstairs and St Peters, teaching and exhibiting in Margate, while his 3rd wife Therese Lessore painted hop pickers. They were supported by a Thanet resident, Sir Alec Martin of the auctioneers Christies, and by the still existing Margate Lovely’s Gallery.
   Other major late 19th century painters such as Sir William Quiller Orchardson lived and painted in Thanet, while the American painter Whistler painted in Westgate. Thanet was where the first bungalows were built in Birchington in the 1880s, one of them adorned with sculpture by the lading sculptor Sir George Frampton. The Victorian Jewish architect Delissa Joseph built a stunning Arts and Crafts bungalow with a studio for his artist wife , the suffragette Lily. Solomon J Solomon , a highly successful portrait painter lived in another of them, and the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti spent his last years in yet another. His grave monument with intriguing sculptural decoration still stands in the churchyard at Birchington.

2. For the Birchington Bungalows see Alan Kay’s article in Birchington Heritage Trust Newsletter November 2002- February 2003 ‘The First Bungalow Estate’ . The architect was Rossetti’s friend John Pollard Seddon [1827-1906] . Charles Annesley Voysey was one of his pupils.
   The first bungalows had built in Westgate where on the cliff there are a series of very fine houses in the Arts and Crafts style designed by the architect, Charles Nightingale Beazley
   Ernest George and Peto also designed Arts and Crafts buildings on the Thanet coast, the finest of which is on the East Cliff in Ramsgate

3. Ramsgate has all the potential (ask those Victorians) especially if/when the port opens its doors to the continent again just watch the small businesses thrive.

4. Typically these schemes are aimed at encouraging incomers rather than residents with an artistic flair. In the last fifteen years we’ve seen a massive drop in creative opportunities for local talent in favour of incomers, and largely locally funded. I’d prefer to see indigenous creative talent developed and encouraged rather than making great economic opportunities for creatives who are already well developed and capitalised. Locals deserve more than the opportunity to wait tables for folk enjoying funding from their taxes.

   • What a negative response to what seems like an excellent idea and it does state in the article that it is aimed at incomers and the community.
     Look at what the Turner Gallery has done for Margate.

     • You might not agree with my point of view but it doesn’t make it a negative one. I’d like to look at what the Turner has done for Margate but there’s no metrics which might show what this actually is. There’s no independent auditing of the Turner so what is often claimed about the Turner is nothing more than a claim, and there’s no hint of what else might have been achieved with the same amount of money.

5. Sandra, Brenda’s point is very fair and factual. Turner Contemporary has been a highly subsidised project to regenerate Margate. This, however, does nothing for the poor in the community other than raise rents and property prices. This proposal by Rob Kenyon and his decorative shirts says more about middle-class ambition than genuine regard for the majority of the local population who pay their taxes too.