News Blast: Margate Pride launches crowdfunding campaign

Margate Pride is calling on the community to help keep it corporate sponsorship free. This and more news from across Thanet, including a photo booth art project and the quest to find the world's funniest fart.

Margate Pride has launched a major fundraising campaign. Bearing in mind Margate Pride don’t use corporate sponsorship, the team are looking to raise £20k to keep the programme free, accessible and community-minded. Funds raised support not only Pride Day in August but the summer festival programme too, which comes off the back of a year round programme of advocacy, events and support for the LGBTQ+ community in Thanet. Donate now. 

Margate Pride has also announced that all official Pride Day events on August 9 will be totally free. The day will kick off at Walpole Bay Lawns for family activities (10am-1pm), then go to the march, which will snake its way through town and into Dreamland (1-2pm) where the rally and party will take place on the Scenic Stage (2-8pm) including music, speeches, and alternative beauty pageant Mx Margate. Register to take part in the march. And watch this space for details of a big afterparty.

I know a gal who was born for this challenge - we all do. Margate’s Crab Museum wants your farts. Whether you’re after a new family bonding experience, home from the pub with mates, or just Jerusalem artichoke-gassy, get guffing. Let rip and record your best trumpet as a voice note and submit it for your chance to claim the prize of World’s Funniest Fart. A panel of judges including comedians Lou Sanders, Nish Kumar, Stevie Martin and Alex Franklin will sniff out the 10 best parps you’ve got to give. The winner will be crowned at an awards ceremony on Saturday, June 14. And what a winner they will be. 

A community art project involving an analogue photo booth, The Love Booth, has gotten underway in Ramsgate. Led by artist Karen Vost, the project invites people to take portraits, snap smooches, and share stories which will form a growing archive of everyday love. Some images submitted will go on display at Ramsgate train station from July to August, and there will be more exhibitions/installations at The Crane Shed during Ramsgate Festival of Sound. Find The Love Booth at The Queens Head Pub. It’s free to use during workshops and events, otherwise it’s open to everyone for £7 and you can share your pics with the hashtag #AtTheLoveBooth. Fun fact: analogue photo booths turn 100 this year. 

Folkestone grassroots music venue and community space The Music Workshop is under threat following a noise complaint. The venue’s owners say that they were served a formal notice by Folkestone & Hythe District Council, threatening a £20,000 fine, loss of their licence and even equipment being seized. This, they say, is the result of “repeated complaints from one individual who’s made it very clear they want us closed.” A petition has now been launched calling for support from the local community. 

Local writers Melissa Todd and Seb Reilly are set to open a new bookshop on Ramsgate High Street called Plunder. “Opening a bookshop in 2025 may seem a bold move - or brave, or bonkers - but I think the timing’s perfect,” writes Melissa in her KentOnline column. “The world is loud, online, and a bit unhinged. People are craving something real, quiet, and full of possibility. Like a book. Or better yet — a whole bookshop.” The shop is set to open next month. 

The new owner of a Grade II listed former language school on Hawley Square in Margate has applied for planning permission to convert the building into two flats and a 45 seat theatre venue. Documents submitted say that the theatre would “prioritise acoustics, accessibility, and seating arrangements”, and would also include an “intimate bar area”. The new venue would sit only a short walk to the Theatre Royal, which is set to include a 50 seat theatre space alongside the main room when it reopens in 2027. 

Another Grade II listed building in Margate, the Britannia pub is set to be converted in to flats, following approval by Thanet District Council this week. A similar application was refused in April last year. Despite opposition from the local branch of CAMRA, councillors agreed with its owners that all efforts to reopen the venue as a pub had been unsuccessful. Closed in 2022, the building has been a pub since the 1840s.

Local food businesses can develop and scale new products at the new EKC Innovation Kitchen in Broadstairs. Based at The Yarrow - a training hotel owned by East Kent Colleges Group - it offers access to specialist equipment and will have a technical consultant on hand to offer advice. Find out more. 

The Perfect Place to Grow in Margate is now open as a cafe. Tucked away in the corner of TKE Studios grounds, it will plate up modern British-inspired breakfasts and lunches fuelled by the programme’s trainee cohort with the help of local chefs and ones from further afield too. Open Tuesday to Friday 9am-3pm, with a Saturday opening on the horizon. 

Smoke & Co in Margate launched a breakfast menu yesterday and it is meaty. Sausage patties, sausages, blood sausages, crumpet stacks, beans, eggs and hashbrowns - there’s not a piece of greenery in sight. It comes in a four person platter, or you can get single serves too. I imagine this would be a good feed after a big night, or when preparing for hibernation. 

Looking for a quirky new abode? What’s being billed as a “one bed detached bungalow” is up for auction in Ramsgate with a guide price of just £105,000. A more accurate description would be “converted former toilet block on the edge of a car park,” but who are we to argue? It’s more likely to be sold for commercial use and has had various uses in the past, including as a pop-up events space. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t live in it. It’s very handy for Waitrose too. Bidding closes on June 9. Find out more.