Margate Festival Now, is happening Now

The Margate Festival Now is under way, now.  A host of art-based community events are taking place across the weekend. The festival couldn’t have kicked off in a better setting than the glorious Garden Gate. The haven based in the corner of Northdown Park in Clifftonville offers an idyllic 1.5 acre walled garden.  The charity aims to promote inclusion and reduce prejudice by bringing people together whilst supporting adults with learning disabilities and/or mental health needs to engage in meaningful health, educational, creative, social, environmental and leisure opportunities.

The volunteer artists were keen to include everyone in their endeavors, Jordan Gray who is assembling a series of banners with faces created by the young and old. Myself and Graeme got the banners under way at the Gardens this afternoon, and may in say in some style. Jordan, the local artist encouraged us to express our creativity something which Graeme certainly did. The reason behind Jordan’s endeavor, ‘Faces of Thanet’ is ‘to get as many people possible, from all walks of life creating and then have a bit of fun and pride seeing they’re face displayed. Once the banners are complete they will be displayed in Turner Contemporary and possibly the harbour. Jordan will be at the Turner Contemporary tomorrow with his banners, purple paint and his very cool artist coat. If you want to be a face of Thanet make sure you get down and see him.

Jordan wasn’t the only artist volunteering his services to the festival, regular Garden Gate volunteer Jason was aiding festival goers to the Gate’s own dark room, the dark room lives a double life as it also operates as a tool shed. I joined Phil, a volunteer in creating pictures with the use of plants, camera flashes and photo paper, the same technique as some of the earliest Victorian photos. Maybe without the camera flash and the tool shed back drop. I haven’t done the process justice, if you are interested you must check out the fantastically versatile shed or the ‘Zine’ which showcases the previous exhibitions the Garden Gate have put on.

Jason tells me how volunteering here over the last three years has changed his life, and its easy to see why, the feeling of calm when you arrive is soothing and its often you can go somewhere and say hello to complete strangers and get a hug (I did with Phil). The Garden Gate really is a brilliant thing and when the sun beams above, flowers surround you and the smell of pizza fills the air there really isn’t a better place to be in Margate.