Dan Thompson regularly writes about the arts for Isle of Thanet News. Living in Ramsgate and based at Marine Studios in Margate, he works for one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations, B arts in Stoke-on-Trent, and is on the board of another, Talking Birds in Coventry.
Here he looks at the latest Portfolio funding awards in Thanet:
It’s great news that four awards have been made to Margate arts organisations, and that they will become Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations from 2023-2026.
Turner Contemporary, Open School East, theatre company 1927, and artist James Leadbitter aka The Vacuum Cleaner will all receive an annual grant to support their work.
It’s pretty much unarguable that creative businesses have helped to lead regeneration in Margate over the last 20 years. Crate Studios, Limbo, and Marine Studios were among the pioneers, opening before Turner Contemporary, but they were building on a rich heritage. With Turner and TS Eliot and Hawkwind, Margate was never a cultural desert, after all.
Those early organisations, Turner Contemporary itself, and the Old Town’s shops and galleries have helped Margate find a new identity. It has moved from just shabby to shabby-chic, and local people have been able to talk with more optimism about the town they live in.
And those people that made an effort fifteen years ago have opened a way for Tracey Emin and co to come to the town, capitalising on the earlier work with canny property investments.
But all four Arts Council England awards are being made to Margate, and while the Isle of Thanet is a small place with plenty of connections, many (just read the comments under any Margate arts story we print) feel that Broadstairs, Ramsgate, and the villages are overlooked in the conversation about the arts. Certainly, of the four it seems Turner Contemporary has made most effort to extend their work across Thanet.
And the Isle of Thanet’s other towns are not cultural deserts. Ramsgate has Big Jelly, a world-class recording studio. Bands literally travel across the world to record in the converted chapel. The tiny Ramsgate Music Hall punches above its size, too, bringing in bands that usually play bigger venues. Pie Factory Music do work for the community that’s not a million miles away from Open School East’s community programme.
At Spacer studios, world-class artists make work about the environmental collapse. Mooch straddle the worlds of art and architecture. And Christopher Tipping, who made a major work for Coventry’s City of Culture 2021, is based in the town.
Broadstairs Folk Week is an event that brings performers – and an audience – from across the world, too.
And individual artists, musicians, actors, and performers across the Isle have a huge clout. From Brenda Blethyn to Janet Fielding, from Adrian Sherwood to Adamski, from Maggie Gee to Keith Brymer Jones, Thanet is full of creative people with big reputations who’ve made a difference locally, too.
Nationally, the creative industries are worth £115.9 billion and support 2.1m jobs, and locally they’re pretty evenly spread across the Isle.
Arts Council England’s investment is a good thing. This is not some arts exceptionalism, by the way. Farming is subsidised. So is fishing. The arms industry has massive subsidy. The UK government supports many industries, and not many give as good a return on their investment as the arts.
So while I’m sure the four organisations receiving funding will do great work, support the wider creative ecology, and will deliver real value for local people, it’s time that Arts Council England’s funding was spread a little more evenly across the Isle of Thanet. When the next announcement comes, in 2026, let’s see organisations from Ramsgate and Broadstairs join the celebration.
