Councillor Wise would like to paint Margate Lighthouse in stripes for £10k

Feature on Cllr Martin Wise's idea to spend £10k painting the lighthouse blue and white stripes. Amazing what gets PRd ain't it!

Perhaps sorting out the seaweed smell would help the Harbour Arm.

Some more dog waste bins from the main sands down to the Lido might help. How about some litter bins and a general clean up of the area round the Lido?

Article in today's Daily Wail:

It is known as one of the South East's most tired seaside resorts, but could a blue and white striped lighthouse cheer it up?

A Tory councillor has suggested the paint job to help improve the image of Margate in Kent and attract more visitors to the once-premier beach resort.

Martin Wise said he wants to spend £10,000 on decorating the 85ft lighthouse 'to make it feel more like the seaside'.

He has suggested a traditional red and white stripe, but blue and white has also been put forward to represent the town's football team, Margate FC.

'It is a deprived area and we just want to put a smile on people's faces,' said Mr Wise.

'We want to enhance the area and put it back on the map.'

But the sandy bays of Margate are often at the mercy of the North Sea and the exposed lighthouse would need frequent retouches to its colourful exterior, argue residents.

Local Labour councillor Clive Hart has gone one step further, labelling the plans a 'waste of money' and saying the funds could be better spent elsewhere.

Once one of the most popular seaside resorts in the UK, Margate has been struck by a series of unfortunate incidents over the past few years, sending already-diminishing tourist numbers plummeting further.

Its Dreamland amusement park has, on many occasions, been threatened with closure despite its posession of the world's oldest wooden rollercoaster.

In 2003, disaster struck when a fire tore through two seaside arcades, destroying them and leaving a great hole in the buildings along the front just before the Easter season.

Then in 2008 another iconic attraction, the Grade II Listed Scenic Railway, was severely damaged by a fire.

However, things are looking up with the alternative art gallery Turner Contemporary due to open on the seafront in 2011.

Locals hope it will do for Margate what the Tate gallery has done for St Ives in Cornwall. It is certainly already inspiring regeneration projects.

'There has been a lot of regeneration,' said Mr Wise. 'We want to be like the European resorts where people are always very proud of making the place look smart.'

Local businesses also received another boost this month when Margate was voted joint second in a poll of Britain's best beaches.

Its nine blue flag beaches saw it tie with Blackpool, coming second only to Tresco beach in the Isles of Scilly.

Event - Tim Spencer exhibition, The Margate Harbour Arm Gallery, Saturday 5th of June

Digital photographer, TimSpencer, is showing a collection of recently worked images in a new exhibition entitled 'about MARGATE' - a series of pictorial representations based on observations made during the three years since he moved from London to Cliftonville.

This is a new perspective showing diverse elements of the beautiful area around Thanet. With a fresh vision, Timhas framed captured moments in that ever-changing relationship between the seemingly permanent and the ostensibly transient.

Tim was born in 1956 and moved from Sussex to London in 1975. Upon completing university and, after 2 years in video production, he joined a local newspaper group and then went on to work as a free-lance photographer for more than 20 years.

Amongst the professional commissions he accepted, Timtook photographs of Prime Minister Tony Blair, Rock legend Mick Jagger and Microsoft founder, Bill Gates.

"The advent of digital photography and computer-based processing couldn’t have come soon enough for me!" says Tim. "The efficiency, the capabilities and the working environment, when released from the dark-room, are fantastic."

Tim moved to Cliftonville in March 2007 and recorded his first year in and around Thanet through a daily photographic blog entitled 'new2margate'. Some of these images appear in the show.

The exhibition 'about MARGATE' will be open at The Margate Harbour Arm Gallery for one day only on

Saturday 5 June 2010
11am - 7pm (free)

There is a preview on

Friday 4 June 2010 (by invitation)

The Margate Harbour Arm Gallery can be found between the new Turner Contemporary Building and the Stone Pier Lighthouse.

Reminder for the Empty Shops workshop April 30th

Got a nice reminder from the folk organising the Empty Shops Initiative event in Margate (30^th April 2010 from 12.30 on Margate's Harbour Arm www.margateharbourarm.co.uk).

"Dan Thompson and every one at We Make Margate are welcoming people to come and find out more about how to use any empty space to revitalise a community.

The event is very informal, so no one will miss anything. There will be a display of photos of many shops both empty and revitalised and a great opportunity to find out about www.bookleteer.com which is a great way of community publishing. Bring some of your pictures of empty shops and you can have a try on the day.

The History walk from Margate Train station which starts at 10.30am. Look out for Kate with a name badge on! If you have not yet confirmed your place for the walk please do so by return of email to margate@tesco.net Don’t forget your camera as there will be lots of great photo opportunities and to help you local photographer Kim Conway http://www.kimconwayphotography.daportfolio.com/gallery/66921#4 will be joining you on the walk."

Why do place names change?

Was just mooching through a lovely old 1836 map of Thanet from the brilliant website Old Ramsgate The Great War that I picked up via the equally nice blog Promote Thanet. I walk my dog most days out at Botany Bay and the name has always struck me as odd. Looking at the map it says it's called Barleymow Bay (that's me squinting and can't really read it that well). It's a lovely name. The Bay then goes round the corner to White Ness and then on to Kingsgate. Which reminded me of the small changes that have come in even over the last few years: The Parade is referred to in the media now as The Piazza and The Stone Pier as the Harbour Arm. Rebranding of place names without good reason sits oddly I think. What's the purpose? It's not as if there has been a disaster, some awful event which makes a name change necessary. Personally, names shouldn't be changed without good reason.

Private View: Michelle Morris

On Friday 5th of June there is a the opening of the artist Michelle Morris' exhibition at her studio on the Harbour Arm.

Glimpse Margate

There's a photographic exhibition coming to the Margate Harbour Arm on April 3rd.
Glimpse seeks to celebrate the Margate UK Flickr group's website postings from the first two years, up until January 2009, and how the members of this online community came together through their photographs of Margate. The exhibition is as much about the people and the collection as the individual images themselves. Some people have never exhibited before, some are artists, some are native to Margate, some were just visiting.

What counts is that they came to Margate, were inspired to take a picture and motivated to share it. Glimpse will run until Sunday 19 April. The opening night event is on Friday 3 April, from 5pm-9pm, with delicious food to try from The Indian Princess restaurant. For more information go to the Glimpse blog at: http://glimpsemargate.blogspot.com/

And that's not the only thing on in town that night. The same Friday has the Turner Contemporary Project Space opening of their new show: The Sound of Music, which explores the links between art, sound and music. Featuring 30 works in a variety of media from artists including John Cage, Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller, Turner Prize nominee Angela Bulloch and Pierre Huyghe, all selected from the collection of the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais in Dunkirk. Alongside Sound of Music, Turner Contemporary presents Crossroads, a new video installation by David Blandy. Crossroads investigates the mythology surrounding the legendary Robert Johnson, a bluesman with three gravestones, 29 recorded songs and only two known photographs, who reputedly sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. The Sound of Music and Crossroads will run until Sunday 14 June.

Also, for one night only local artists will transform the interior of the Substation Project Space into a fantasy stage-set which will encompass both the audience and the evening’s musical performers. Headline act, French-Swiss two piece Vialka, proclaim themselves to be a “Turbo-folk mini-orchestra”, and promise to thrill the audience with their cabaret-influenced punk rock. Support comes from Margate’s Neverest Songs, Faversham’s Tikoloshe, and Canterbury/Brighton act Savlon. In addition, the local Roadkill Fanzine will be holding a stall at the venue, selling ‘zines, T-shirts and drawings. Tickets for this event are £4.50 payable on the door.on the night.

Harbour Arm opening weekend

Thank goodness the weather was better on Friday and Saturday than today. The opening of the Harbour Arm works has gone off with a real success. Lovely to see it all come together. They really pulled it off at the eleventh hour.

IOTA Gallery put on a great exhibition of works with the promise of more quality contemporary art to come. Sorry it's gone from Ramsgate, folks, but it's just the kind of organisation needed by Margate if it's to live up to the arts being at the centre of regeneration.

The renovations of the fishermen's sheds look to be great quality. The idea of swapping out the top hatch loading doors for glass panels has worked brilliantly.

Spending time at the end of the Arm it's clear what a great view of Margate this is and how the cafe bar at the end will be one of the best spots in town. Immediately at the water's edge without traffic in between you, your thoughts and the view of Margate.

On Saturday there were foodstalls, which I hope will continue on a regular basis (although no info on that yet). There is a lack of small food shops in central Margate and a weekly food market could be a real draw for visitors and a positive addition to the town.


Last night's celebrations were topped off with a firework display that was simply stunning. So yes, I'm a bit gushing about the new kid in town, but it's well deserved. It came together from conception to realisation in record time. I look forward to many happy hours spent looking back to Margate and seeing it all come together.