Margate Reimagined

Margate Reimagined was commissioned by Margate Festival for their 2019 programme which ran alongside the Turner Prize exhibition at Margate's Turner Contemporary. This project was delivered through a combination of walks, workshops, artistic & architectural proposals and poetry. Margate Reimagined is a present day vision of Margate with an alternative past. Bringing together heritage both real and imaginary this project speculates about a town that might have been, or could yet become.

Project conceived and coordinated by Jon Spencer and Dominic Rose (under the banner of Transit Collective) alongside contributions from architects RL-a, walking artist Simon Cole and poetry collective Margate Stanza.

Interpretation panels and project guide

At the core of the project were a series of interpretation panels positioned at 9 sites around Margate. Each of these panels described a narrative which was rooted in a forgotten or lesser known element of Margate's history relating to that site. In each case the narratives leave history behind at some point in favour of an alternative, imaginary past. We were intentionally vague on this shift, hoping to encourage a playful, questioning response to the stories - if that was true, what else might have happened, what could happen in the future?

A folding map was produced and distributed at key sites, inviting people to visit all the sites as a way of exploring Margate. Equally the panels worked as individual moments of discovery.

Walking Tours

These were led by walking artists and tour guide Simon Cole. On the tours, Simon created his own narrative, also a mix of fact and fantasy, which linked all the sites together. Participants in the tours were invited to join the Regeneration Game workshop on the same day. This provided an opportunity to refocus some of the (hi)stories being discussed on the tour into their own creative output.

Workshops

We ran a total of 3 public workshops, the first at the Turner Contemporary as part of the opening celebrations for the Festival, and two editions of the Regeneration Game workshop were held at The Shop Front as a follow on to the walking tours.

You can read more about the Regeneration Game here.

Display

The whole project was brought together in a show at the Shop Front community gallery on Northdown Road in Cliftonville.