Culture Recovery grants approved for 12 Thanet organisations totalling £740k

Some of Thanet's grant recipients

Twelve Thanet organisations will share grants totalling £740,407 in the latest round of awards from the Culture Recovery Fund.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has today (April 2) announced that more than 2,700 cultural and creative organisations across the country are to receive a share of more than £400 million in grants and loans.

This includes more than £300 million, which has been awarded in grants through Arts Council England, Historic England, National Lottery Heritage Fund and the British Film Institute.

Another £81 million has been offered by DCMS in tailor-made loans for cultural landmarks.

In Thanet the recipients are:

OrganisationAward amount
1927 (Margate)£95,100
Broadstairs Folk Week£59,420
Elsewhere Records Ltd (Margate)£27,442
Faith In Strangers (Margate£53,500
Margate Arts Club£29,787
POW! Thanet£25,070
Resort Studios (Margate)£53,516
SPACER (Ramsgate)£35,000
The Margate School Ltd£67,500
Video Illusions Ltd (Ramsgate)£233,176
Westcoast Kent Community Interest Company (Margate)£34,527

A further award of £26,369 has been made to The Palace Cinema in Broadstairs via the British Film Institute.

Palace Cinema Broadstairs

On facebook cinema bosses Corinna Downing and Simon Ward say: “The BFI has awarded the Palace additional funding to support Broadstairs’ special cinema as it gets up and running again. We’re small but one of many: 40% of the UK’s cinemas are local independents and 200+ of them have received this CRF funding.”

POW! Festival 2021

The POW! festival will be using the funding to support year round projects focused on providing opportunities for young people and the local community, as well as expanding online reach in an increasingly digital world.

Artistic Director Amy Redmond said: “We are over the moon to know we can continue developing and nurturing our POW! Youth project, extend our podcast production and social media, develop a community dance project and more after receiving funding from the Cultural Recovery Fund. The need to support women and girls has never been more vital and we can’t wait to get these projects in action.”

The eight woman team of POW! Say they are incredibly grateful to receive this important funding at a time when the arts industry is beginning the long process of recovery post-lockdown.

Uwe Derksen, founder and director at The Margate School, said: The Cultural Recovery Fund comes at a crucial moment for our School and creative hub development right in the heart of Margate. The funding will allow us to build on our achievements offering the only European Masters degree in Fine Art in the country with our partners L’École Supérieure d’ Art et Design Le Havre-Rouen, having MA students graduating for the first time in Margate and being the first creative organisation to offer creative apprenticeships in Margate.

“We hope that post lockdown we will again welcome similar visitor numbers to our exhibitions and community events as we did in 2019 and early 2020, which were around 16,000 visitors. We believe that this funding will also actively and implicitly support the Arts Council strategy Let’s Create by improving and diversifying access to a quality arts experience and grounded creative cross-disciplinary practice.”

Funding for Broadstairs Folk Week Photo Frank Leppard

Broadstairs Folk Week is a registered charity and not for profit organisation. The grant will be used to support the festival to ensure that it takes place in a safe environmentFolk Week usually takes a year to organise and this grant will help with operational costs that otherwise organisers would not be able to finance as they have lost a year of ticket and fund-raising income.

Lee Wellbrook, Chairman of Broadstairs Folk Week, said: “We were so sad to cancel the 2020 Broadstairs Folk Week and disappoint our loyal festival goers. It has been running for over 54 years without a break until this terrible pandemic hit the UK. 

“We would like to thank all our loyal supporters who have continued to become Friends of Folk Week and make donations to the festival and this award from the Cultural Recovery Fund shows that Broadstairs Folk Week is valued by the Arts Council England as an important contributor to the arts in England.”

1927

For 14 years, 1927 has worked across theatre and opera to craft multi-award winning productions of ambition and scale that synchronise performance and live music with handcrafted animation.

Over 1 million people in 46 countries have seen 1927’s work, across 6 continents. After a year of cancelled touring, this grant will support  1927 to restart its Live Performance programme, enabling the Company to commission and contract freelance creatives to develop a new large scale 1927 Theatre show for premiere in 2022.

Jo Crowley, 1927 Executive Producer said: “This grant provides 1927 with a vital injection of resource to support our freelance ensemble of performers, technicians and production specialists to revive our curtailed theatre show Roots for touring later from this year and to commission artists to develop new work. This commissioning, creation and production activity ensures we can invest in creative talent, employ our freelance collaborators, rebuild earned income and vitally will ensure 1927 can stay connected and reach audiences in the UK and internationally.”

Today’s announcement brings the Government’s total investment across grants, capital and repayable finance from the Culture Recovery Fund so far to more than £1.2 billion across over 5,000 individual cultural organisations and sites.

26 Comments

  1. Some more deserving than others (personally I’d use the POW money for the “beyond repair” lifts instead, ditto 2 or 3 others).

    • Agreed – a lot of these recipients are operating and trading as businesses – not as charities run by volunteers.

      The money would have been better used in repairing the lifts at Ramsgate and Broadstairs or the Clocktower toilets at Margate – something for the public rather than lining individuals pockets.

  2. How was this decided? There are numerous ‘pots’ of government COVID and ‘recovery’ money coming to Thanet, there needs to be complete transparency about HOW the money is allocated.
    I’ve never heard of some of these groups, are they on some ‘special’ list?

      • I can’t help but agree with the above, who picked this lot, remember this is our money, and I have never heard of most of these people. There must be others who will be bitterly disappointed they weren’t included!

      • Richard – could not agree more with you. Never heard of most of these arty things. I am sure money could be better spent .

    • It is sheer lunacy that there is money in one pot to pay for a masters degree in fine arts but not money in another pot to pay for public toilets to be repaired.

      How can anybody in their right mind justify such things ? Since when did a masters degree in Margate take priority over a toilet in Margate ?

    • Regrettably, it’s knowing how to play the system. `Creatives’ have, forgive the pun, got it down to a fine art. Money is channeled to minorities who know the right things to say to guarantee a grant for their fripperies. The majority can only watch in dismay as cash-starved necessities are allowed to decay.

  3. Faith in strangers private members club and Margate Arts club!!! These are exclusive clubs, has anyone actually had an overpriced Dalston cola from arts club would cost you the local minimum wage !! This is an absolute joke and disgrace!
    I am so upset more deserving organisations out there!

    Faith in strangers has done no community engagement and since receiving its last bumper grant has tried to latch on to local organisations to show its part of the community…. seriously they have received £150k since Covid with no proven track record of community engagement for what is essential a coworking space with bar! Membership starts at £120 a month…..

  4. Can see why charities are getting awards but a little confused as to why Ltd companies are. One Ltd ramsgate company is getting nearly quarter of a million pounds.

  5. So pleased that these local organisations have managed to secure funding, that without them taking the time to apply to this national fund, would have gone to organisations elsewhere in the UK. Very pleased for POW in particular they put on so many events even in lockdown that are free of charge and accessible to everyone.

    • Perhaps they can spend some of it on a couple of pots of paint, and get some of your artists to do something with that ceiling.

  6. Loving the prime gammon comments here. If money isn’t being spent on tarmacking roads or fixing rooves it’s being wasted. Such a limited and limiting view of the world. As for the shouts of ‘our tax money’ being spent on ‘tripe’ – snowflakes, if you’ve ever had kids/grandkids or a big op on the NHS it’s not ‘your’ tax money anymore. You stopped being a net contributor a long time ago.

    • How about the fixing of lifts and toilets to help those less fortunate than the majority, is that a reasonable complaint?

    • You are a very sad person with such comments. Many of us fail to see the so called benefits of throwing money at such organisations when so much more benefit could be had for the majority.

      • Money hasn’t been thrown at anyone. Organisations APPLIED for funding ring-fenced for a specific purpose. If you want more funding for neighbourhood improvements, infrastructure, social care, youth services etc., I suggest you stop voting for the one party who over the last decade has steathily reduced that funding year after year.

    • There are many who feel that getting the basics right is more beneficial to the wider community than funding what appears to be a series of largely commercial ventures, Video Illusions is a provider of display screens for events , personaly this seems to be little more than substantial business support via the back door. As for the arguably more community led projects they seem rather reminiscent of “Kids Company “ led by the Carmen Miranda Wannabe , Batmangelidge ( excuse spelling) and its no secret that Kids Co. were little more than a scam built around self promotion.
      By all means encourage the arts but having wasted a portion of my life trying to decide which primary school class had thrown together the Turner entries , then not being surprised that the so called artists were going to share the prize ( probably too embarrassed to call their creations worthy art) I like many struggle to find any of the current offerings as relatable to my world.
      For many years I’ve casually followed the works of “Gilbert and George’, who’ve been around for decades, reinvented themselves many times and produced huge quantities of work some of which is of no interest to me , but i’d hazard a guess that somewhere in their catalogue there will be something for everyone. Read up on them and look at the form of community engagement they’ve done, all done on the back of their own success.
      Any artists of a similar ilk starting out onntheir art careers today? If that makes me a Gammon so be it.

      • Nice bit of dog whistle racism there. And as for Gilbert and George, it really doesn’t surprise me Liam that the only artist you like is a sneering little Tory outfit.

        • John – Tut tut you are becoming boring and sad. There is a real world most of us live in and what has politics to do with subject. Grow up please.

          • FedupB – ‘what has politics got to do with the subject’? This from someone who purports to live in the real world? Give your head a wobble FuB.

  7. It’s a cultural recovery fund – there are funds for repairing lifts / toilets etc – if you think something is better deserving, perhaps you should look into helping finding funding instead of moaning about those that have bothered.

    I’ll never understand why people are so cynical in the comments, it’s pathetic.

    • Because you do not understand people, it does not follow that they are wrong. Is it really pathetic to wish that public money is spent in a way which will result in the greatest benefit to the many, rather than on the narrow interests of the few?

      • The poor have always subsided the rich follies. That’s the tory way millions spent on so called art. What is it now about 27 million spent on the TC and not a single penny raised on entrance fees !. 27 million quid on art in margate unbelievable really, 17 million to build it than less than ten years needs a few million upgrades, why wasnt it built to last longer 10 years ?

  8. This grant is specifically aimed at “cultural and creative organizations”. (I quote the article above).

    How much money has this government misspent since the beginning of the pandemic?

    Politics is involved with every aspect of society: there’s no getting away from it.

  9. I find it fascinating how many idiotic comments have been made here. If you have lived in Thanet for more than 10 years YOU have personally benefited massively from what investment in arts and culture has brought to the area. Your homes were worth pee all when Margate/Ramsgate/Broadstairs were considered the bum end of nowhere 10/20 years ago. Since TC and so many cultural organisations were created you’ve personally benefitted by being able to remortgage/sell up and buy that place in Spain/boast about how much your grotty semi has gone up in value.

    Investing in arts and culture has a proven huge impact on a community especially those from a disadvantaged background. Having access to art previously reserved for ‘cities’ encourages communities to mix, creates debate, improves local education and further enhances people’s engagement with a diverse mix of cultures.

    Having access to arts and culture on your doorstep massively enhances an overall sense of pride in the local community. Who can say they preferred Margate in the late 90’s/early 2000’s?!? This influx of investment in culture has benefited the locals just as much as it’s attracted groups of new people into the area.

    Without this investment in the Arts, all these idiots moaning about the state of the public loos (infrastructure comes from an entirely different budget) would still be living in the poo hole Thanet used to be!

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