Broadstairs

The best of Strange Tourist in 2025

A look back at some of our favourite interviews from the last twelve months, with some of Thanet's most interesting and creative people

Strange Tourist

20 Dec 2025 — 9 min read

We've done loads of interviews interesting people this year. Photo: Pixel-Shot/Adobe Stock

We’ve spent the last twelve months looking ahead to what’s coming up in Thanet. To finish 2025, we thought we’d take a look back instead.

We published nearly 30 interviews with a huge range of creative people, and put together local guides covering the best brunch spots, LGBTQ+ meet ups, coastal bike rides and much more. We also ventured out from behind our computers for events of our own for the first time - something we hope to do more of next year.

Here, we’ve pulled together some of our favourite interviews from this year. We’ve spoken to so many interesting people, it was hard to cut it down to just a handful. We've included a range of different things that demonstrate just what a varied and creative place Thanet is. How lucky are we?

It’s a treat putting together the newsletter for you each week and we look forward to doing more of that in the new year. If you’ve enjoyed reading it so far, you might perhaps consider becoming a Supporter. These voluntary subscriptions help us to cover the costs of putting this together each week, ensuring that we’re able to continue, and grow.

We also realise that money is often tight at this time of year. So, we’re having a sale. If you sign up for a weekly subscription now, you’ll get 75% your first three months. That’s just 75p a month until March.

Now, before we get all retrospective, let’s take one quick look ahead. Have you sorted out what you’re doing for New Year’s Eve yet? It’s less than two weeks away. Don’t worry though, we’ve found all the best things to do, whether you’re looking for a big party, some family-friendly fun or even a night in.

Have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. The newsletter will be back in January. If we don’t see you at the rubber chicken house in Ramsgate for Christmas Eve carols, see you then!

Andy and Zita

Konformer at Ramsgate Music Hall. *Photo: Rich Broome*

Live music pressures

Where Else in Margate recently launched a crowdfunder to help the music venue get on financially stable footing in 2026. The pressures facing grassroots venues over the last few years has seen hundreds disappear forever around the country. Earlier this week, we spoke to Where Else owner Sammy Clarke and then boss of Ramsgate Music Hall Andre Dack about the difficulties they were facing.

Pie Factory Music

Another organisation facing an uncertain future this year was youth service Pie Factory Music in Ramsgate. We spoke to CEO Zoë Carassik as the charity launched a campaign to fight plans by Kent County Council to sell off Ramsgate Youth Centre, from which it has been operating since 2013. The good news is that Thanet District Council’s Ramsgate Neighbourhood Board has now granted Pie £535,000 from the government’s Pride in Place Programme with which to buy the freehold of the building.

The Love Booth

A creative project we absolutely loved this year was The Love Booth. Setting up an analogue photo booth in Ramsgate’s Queens Head pub, artist Karen Vost collected an archive of photos that explored love, intimacy and friendship - with some amazing stories attached to them. The images were displayed at an exhibition in September and we were delighted when Karen invited us to interview her about the project live on stage. This followed an earlier interview back at the beginning of the project.

Smugglers Festival

Smugglers Festival was a massive highlight of 2025 for us. A weekend spent in a small patch of woodland watching possibly the most eclectic range of music we’ve seen at any festival - everything twee pop played on a tiny Casio keyboard to epic prog metal. So much goes into making this a magical experience, with plenty of hidden areas to seek out and enjoy. Although the thing we still talk about most of all is the lemon wrestling tournament we watched for several hours in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Margate Queer Library & Archive

In June, writer and researcher Sé Nomayo opened Margate Queer LIbrary & Archive, a space that aims to increase access to LGBTQ+ history and literature, as well as documenting the stories of Margate’s queer community. It was great to speak to Sé as they opened the library and to see it go from strength to strength over the last six months. We also got to delve even deeper when Sé joined us for our live panel discussion at Margate Bookie in October.

Corinna Downing in the Palace's 111 seat auditorium. *Photo: Strange Tourist*

The Palace Cinema

The Palace Cinema in Broadstairs celebrated its 60th birthday this year. We spoke to co-owner Corinna Downing about the independent cinema’s history, maintaining a balanced programme of blockbusters and more obscure films, and what the future holds. Next year, Corinna and her husband Simon Ward will have been running the venue for ten years - after first hearing that it was up for sale while attending a children’s birthday party.

Lou Sanders

In September, we interviewed Lou Sanders about her new show No Kissing in the Bingo Hall, ahead of a performance at Ramsgate’s Granville Theatre. Well, was the interview about that? No, not really. Efforts to discuss the show proved pretty fruitless. Instead, we spoke about her memoir, moving to Margate and begrudgingly about trampolines.

Samhain Society founder Tree Carr. *Photo: Tara Li-An Nomayo*

A Dead Good Festival

It’s not every day you get the opportunity to sit down for coffee with a high priestess witch. Did we leap at the chance? Yes. Were we disappointed? Most definitely not. Tree Carr made engaging and interesting company, which we hopefully captured in this article. The meeting was to discuss her festival celebrating the “witches’ new year” Samhain, but the conversation went much further into magic, attitudes to death and more.

Mike Goldwater

Our first interview of 2025 was with award-winning photojournalist Mike Goldwater about his book Island, an amazing collection of photographs taken around Thanet. His work having taken him around the globe, we spoke about turning the lens on his home. He told us about the stories behind the images, taking photos without judgement, and the art of predicting where something interesting is going to happen.

[L-R] Zita Whalley, Sé Nomayo, Katie McGarry, Andy Malt, Sidonie Carey-Green, Hughie Gavin. *Photo:* Chris F Clark

Building Stories

For this year’s Margate Bookie, we were asked to put on our own event. With several events featuring local authors already in the calendar, we decided to explore storytelling in a different way. We invited theatre maker Katie McGarry, songwriter Hughie Gavin, dance filmmaker Sidonie Carey-Green and founder of Margate Queer Library Sé Nomayo to discuss how they tell stories through their work - some of which we heard performed live too.