An exhibition about the things that Margate has lost along the way...
11am - 4pm
An exhibition inspired by a collection of poetry, which features international artists alongside some unlikely historic artefacts, will explore the impact of waves of incomers on the North Kent town of Margate.
Where The Land Forgets Itself was written by Connor Sansby, a poet and performer born in Margate, who grew up there before the town’s current arts-led reinvention. Published in 2025, Where The Land Forgets Itself explores the idea that, as the town has been ashamed of itself for so long, it didn’t tell its own story. That left a blank space for newcomers to fill with their own narrative.
Sansby is now working with artist-curator Dan Thompson and museum designer Kate Kneale on a week-long exhibition titled Lost Margate, which happens in the first week of February. Rather than a straightforward exhibition about gentrification, Thompson has taken the idea that different waves of people who’ve arrived in the town mourn a different version of the town, as it is constantly rewritten by newer arrivals – a process Sansby compares to the tide washing in and out.
But after lots of failed starts, around 2010, the town was finally turned around by three major investments – in building the landmark Turner Contemporary gallery, in the restoration of the nearby Old Town, and by the dramatic creation of a new public space on the beach as part of flood defence works. Together, the three gave the town an over-arching narrative as a place of sea and sky, a natural beauty that inspired generations of artists and writers.
However, despite the town’s current success it still has poverty, and an older generation still miss the town of their youth – Kiss Me Quick hats, seaside amusements and the Bembom Brothers theme park, cheap bars and unlicensed nightclubs, and the waves of Mods, Rockers, and later Skinheads who brought youth culture to the town.
Lost Margate will attempt to weave all those different stories together, with a series of prints from New York-based Ellen Harvey’s The Disappointed Tourist (the originals are currently on show at Chicago Architecture Center), contact sheets from a 1990s photographic survey by French photographer Gérard Uféras, and artefacts like Patrick Abercrombie’s 1920s regeneration plans for East Kent, a collection of seaside ceramic souvenirs from Stoke-on-Trent’s Goss factory, and a stool made of wood from the listed 1921 Scenic Railway rollercoaster. The trio even chose a venue to contribute to the conversation: the pop up exhibition happens in a former pie factory in Margate’s Old Town.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of events – including a talk on Margate’s Lost Cinemas by Corinna Dowling, owner of the independent Palace Cinema, a history walk by Dan Thompson, and workshops.
Free
Address
Lost Margate at the Pie Factory 06 - 09/02/26
Pie Factory, 5 Broad Street, Margate
CT9 1EW
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