Background
Folkestone is a coastal town, with a harbour, in the far south-east
corner of England. It's in the county of Kent, only a few miles from
the famous White Cliffs of Dover. In the mid-nineteenth century, the
first regular steam-boat service to France ran from Folkestone to Bolougne,
and the famous Golden Arrow transcontinental train service used the
Folkestone ferries. In Edwardian times the town became very fashionable,
partly because of its excellent railway connections to London and its
desirable climate.
In recent years Folkestone has seen woeful decline; there was a temporary
boost to the economy during the building of the Channel Tunnel, followed
by a huge plunge when the Tunnel opened and the ferries eventually disappeared.
Many previously elegant parts of the town have suffered from a neglect
which in places has become all but irreversible.
The oldest surviving buildings are clustered around a few streets, notably
The Bayle and The Old High Street which leads from the cliff-top town-centre
down the side of a steep valley to the harbour. Parts of this area have
been very badly neglected in recent years – property values have
been low and landlords have been unwilling to effect necessary repairs
and maintenance to the buildings, which in turn have lain empty or attracted
such impoverished tenants that the overwhelming atmosphere became one
of misery and desperation.
Regeneration
Several attempts have been made to set about regenerating the town but
all have been piecemeal and have soon fizzled out. In 2001, a consortium
comprising the Metropole Arts Centre, the Saga Group (a major local
employer) and the local council conceived the idea of the creative quarter
as a way to regenerate the Old Town area through creativity and the
arts. Originally referred to as the cultural quarter, a name
which was rejected at the first public meeting on the subject as smacking
of elitism, the project was quickly welcomed by many local artists and
'creatives', and in no time it was gathering momentum.
Central to the project has been the formation of The Creative Foundation,
a trust which
has been set up specifically to acquire and develop a number of properties
in order to make them available to creative tenants at realistic rents.
This major long-term initiative is inevitably complex, but has already
been accompanied by numerous small advances by individuals whose imagination
has been fired by the prospects and who are prepared to take a chance
on the success of the scheme. The Quarter's mission was to report on
it all.