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"Nurture means caring for something, giving it the time, space and conditions it needs to grow.”
For People Dem Collective, nurture is both a principle and a practice. It takes time, space, and care to allow something to grow and too often, the arts sector denies those conditions to the communities who need them most.
They are beginning a new chapter with a residency at Quench Gallery, Margate. This programme unfolds across three exhibitions and carries forward their long-term commitment to artists and communities who are too often left at the margins of the art world.
When they first moved into Dreamland, it wasn’t a studio complex but an abandoned office, harsh strip lighting above, tired blue carpet underfoot. A stopgap space while they waited for a building that never materialised. But even there, possibilities grew. They turned that office into their HQ, and from its corridors and corners the seeds of their residency programme were planted. What was once corporate became communal a place where artists could take risks, grow, and build relationships.
At Quench, they continue that work, offering time, space, and access to resources that are not always financial but are always vital: a room to breathe, mentors to walk beside you, collaborators to bounce ideas off, a system of care that feeds an ecosystem.
Their commitment has always been to their community. But their resilience has been rooted in spatial justice, in the fight for permanent space where Black- and Brown-led cultural work can thrive, rather than survive from project to project. Just as they incubate others, they too need systems, structures, and resources that nurture them. Without this, the cycle of precarity continues.
Through this residency, they aim to show up in different ways: as hosts, as collaborators, as supporters of curators and artists, and as advocates for permanent space that can sustain this ecosystem into the future.
4 Years in Dreamland
A retrospective of resident artists Geoffrey Chambers, Jas Dhillon, and Peter Nichols, bringing together work they created or nurtured during their time with People Dem Collective. This is not a show about their experience of Dreamland, but about the art that took shape in that period. Expect photography, ceramics, mark-making, sound, social practice, and research-driven work rooted in archives and histories. Together these pieces reflect the breadth of practices that were nurtured within that unlikely space.
Brexciya
A thought-provoking exhibition that reimagines narratives of belonging, resistance, and rebirth through the works of Kumbirai Makumbe, Emmanuel Awuni, and the artist duo Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban. Inspired by Drexciya—a speculative mythology created by Detroit-based electronic duo Drexciya—Brexciya explores themes of migration, identity, and transformation, while situating these ideas within the socio-political context of Margate and Thanet, a region pivotal to Brexit.
Movements from the Margins in partnership with Diasporas Now
A cross-diasporic celebration of art, music, dance, and community organising as collective spiritual practice. Past iterations at Turner Contemporary and We Out Here have paired musicians with healers, offered food, movement, and sound, and created spaces for rest, regeneration, and intergenerational gathering.
This January, Movements from the Margins will continue in that spirit, holding space for artists, healers, and communities to set intentions for the year ahead.
Together, People Dem Collective and Diasporas Now reimagine the meaning of nurturing cultural movements from the margins – from the coasts of Margate, to the distant shores of diasporic roots.
Click here to find out more about Quench
