The Ramsgate Neighbourhood Board has launched the ‘Bring it to Life’ small grants fund, as part of the Pride in Place Programme for the town.
Ramsgate groups and small businesses are invited to bid for a share of the £15,000 funding pot, with new and creative ideas to help tell Ramsgate’s story. Projects will be awarded amounts between £500 and £2,000.
Ideas from Ramsgate-based charities, community organisations, schools, youth clubs, self-employed creatives and small businesses are positively encouraged. A plethora of creative projects will be considered from painting to poetry as well as social media and digital campaigns.
Applications will be accepted until Monday 23 February. All information and guidance is on the council’s website. Successful applicants can expect to be notified by Tuesday 3 March and receive their funding in early March.
Last year Ramsgate was awarded £20m of government funding to be used over a ten-year period from 2026 to 2036.
However, the fund was again allocated under the new Plan for Neighbourhoods and the aim is for the Pride in Place funds to be invested into towns to create growth and opportunities.
Brian Horton, Interim Chair of the Ramsgate Neighbourhood Board, said: “We are launching this fund to get the whole town involved in telling Ramsgate’s story. The new ten-year plan, Revive and Thrive, has been submitted to government, but a vision is just words on a page until you bring it to life.”
“We’re looking for creative projects that show what our new values and our five local priorities look like in the real world. It’s about creating things people can see, hear, and experience themselves.”
Cllr Rick Everitt, Leader of Thanet District Council and member of the Ramsgate Neighbourhood Board, said: “Ramsgate is a town brimming with creativity, resilience and pride. Before the major regeneration work begins, we want to ensure the community is leading the way. This fund is about putting power directly into the hands of local people, to tell their own story.
“We know that the best ideas for Ramsgate won’t come from a boardroom – they will come from our residents, our artists and our businesses. I look forward to seeing what they create to kickstart this ten-year journey.”
Creators are asked to record their journey – taking photos and videos of the process of making their ideas happen. All of the creative projects (whether finished or works-in-progress) will be displayed at a showcase day in Ramsgate Town Centre on Sunday 19 April. This event will run as part of the town’s St George’s Day Spring Parade and launches the town’s ten-year Pride in Place programme.
Anyone that’s interested in finding out more before applying is invited to an online session, on Tuesday 17 February from 12 to 1pm. There will be a chance to ask questions and free places can be booked here.
To find out more, and to read the guidance information before applying, visit thanet.gov.uk.
As a society we need to get away from these grants. All this article demonstrates is that the labour administration are unable to think of anything for themselves. This is all smoke and mirrors as it looks like they’re doing something but in fact they’re doing nothing apart from wasting our taxpayers money. At the end of this process the harbour will not have benefited in a commercial way going forward.
I beg to differ Gerald, Labour has plenty of ideas and is implementing them.The development of Jacky Bakers, Training Hub at Newington, Restoring Ramsgate Market, Repair of the Waterfall at Madeira Walk, Repair of Lifts in Multistory Carpark. Lights on the westcliff and Town centre………………………………………………..I could go on, but we’d very much like to hear from you as to how to use this £20m Labour government grant.
Well David perhaps,but TDC were going to transfer the waterfall to the Town council 7 years ago, and it never happened. The lifts are another case. Do you really thing a new Unitary is going to bothered with it? Buy up some of the freehold derelict shops with the cash and convert them into other uses, and while you are at it, work with the FE college to make the conversions training projects.
Giving out grants with strings will not attract worthwhile projects unless you have some idea about what you want to happen. Actually Gérard is wrong, arts and crafts can be therapy,so is gardening, and also a start of a small business for some.As for the market, is it really booming or is it again something that the Town Council can manage and support.look at Deal and Salisbury where the Unitary devolved instead of constantly getting in the way as TDC does with markets.How about the Beach club on the Marina carport site, some of the £20m could make that happen, which would better than letting Rob Kenyon’s mob getting their sticky mitts on the site and the cash.
I look at Salisbury and it’s relationship with Wiltshire, and RTC and TDC, which was bedevilled from the start with narrow minded politics, and gollum like obstanacy from TDC in a bid to justify its miserable existence. It’s enough to make you weep!
Seems like a waste of money. “Pottery” and “social media” are going to do nothing to actually regenerate the town. Small pots of up to £2000… that’s nothing. The money should be going to actual schemes thst will regenerate the town not people’s hobbies.
In a nutshell no creatives want to work with TDC. The council try’s to buy creatives ideas and vision for a pittance and low level so called grant. End result creatives ideas and vision own by the council. Be careful fellow creatives lots of people got burned with this recently with the council thinking they owned them.
Are you talking about the heavily subsidised “creatives” in Margate – most of whom couldn’t paint a wall?
It speaks volumes that community engagement in TDC-led projects now requires paid incentives.
After the handling of previous Levelling Up programmes, many community organisations feel they were invited in to help shape bids, only to see decisions taken elsewhere once funding was secured. Whether intentional or not, that approach has clearly damaged trust.
You cannot repeatedly ask groups to invest time, energy and credibility into regeneration schemes and then expect goodwill to remain intact when projects are altered, scaled back or withdrawn without meaningful accountability.
If this new initiative is serious about community involvement, rebuilding trust has to come first. Otherwise these grants risk appearing transactional — buying participation rather than fostering genuine partnership.
Now I know TDC & RTC are in cockoo land
A plethora of creative projects will be considered from painting to poetry?.. W.T.F? Its remind me of those lefty , ‘Greenham Common women who want to look like men’ campaigners who think artistic dance and poetry readings will change the world… dream on.
Why is it that these so called “creatives” are always after other peoples money to fund their fads?