Is art really saving Kent's struggling towns?

Creative regeneration has transformed Folkestone and Margate, but are the benefits felt by everyone?

If you’d said in the early 2000s that Margate would become a weekend destination for Londoners or that Folkestone would be talked about as one of the UK’s most vibrant small towns, you would have sounded hopelessly optimistic. For decades, once the seaside boom had busted, these places were famous for their empty hotels, discount shops, and a slow decline marked by shuttered amusements and a constant drip of negative headlines. Local and national coverage at the time regularly described the decline of Kent’s seaside resorts, painting a picture of places struggling to find a future as traditional industries and holidaymakers disappeared.

The situation, as far as many were concerned, was chronic. Industry and tourism had gone, with domestic holidaymakers flying to Spain, and the best many towns could hope for was the odd coach trip, a film crew looking for faded grandeur, or the next government regeneration scheme that often came with high hopes and vanished a year later. For local councils with limited budgets and rising social care needs, they began to look toward culture as a response to decline. Arts-led regeneration offered a vision where galleries and artists might do what factories and funfairs could not.

Folkestone became the most high-profile test case, largely thanks to Roger De Haan, the former Saga head, who set up Creative Folkestone and spent tens of millions buying up and restoring decaying buildings. What they did was simple on the surface but radical in practice: Fill the town’s old centre with artists, creative businesses, and independent shops by offering affordable rents and practical support. The results are obvious if you visit today. The streets around Tontine Street and the Old High Street are home to galleries, studios, coffee shops, and the Quarterhouse performance venue. Little of this existed two decades ago, but they are arguably what the town is now known for. Front and centre is the Folkestone Triennial, an international arts festival launched in 2008, with the last edition in 2021 bringing 220,000 visitors to the town.

Folkestone Harbour.

All of this has changed how Folkestone feels and how it is seen from the outside. Once a byword for decline, in 2024, The Times named it the ‘best place to live in the southeast.’ Creative Folkestone reported a 98% occupancy rate across their properties, even before the pandemic and the influx of new creatives that brought to the town.

But if you take a step back from the galleries and coffee shops, the picture is more complicated. The east and north of the town remain among the most deprived parts of Kent. Most new jobs created are in hospitality, retail, and the service sector. Despite the creative sector’s growth, most residents in these neighbourhoods still earn below the national average. Browsing local community groups, some local residents complain that while the town centre feels livelier, rising rents have made it harder to get by in some parts of the town. The growth of short-term lets and demand from newcomers mean much of the town is now out of reach for the people who lived in Folkestone when its prospects looked much bleaker.