Harper-Thames on the coastal migration of the London creative class and its implications
Published at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. If you want to find the Shoreditch art scene of 2010, go to Margate. The artists who can no longer afford E1 have not, as was predicted for a decade, moved to Hackney Wick or Peckham or further east. Many of them have left London entirely, moving to the Kent coast where the rents are manageable, the studio space is available, and the community is dense enough that the social infrastructure of the London art world is partially replicated in a smaller setting by the sea. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat went to Margate.
The Margate Reality
Margate’s art community is now large enough to be a genuine ecosystem rather than a colony. The Turner Contemporary anchors a gallery circuit that extends through independent spaces in the old town and along the seafront. The restaurants and cafes that serve the artist community have proliferated to the point where the old town has the density of a London neighbourhood that has been very recently discovered and has not yet been fully transformed by the discovery. The housing is genuinely affordable. The commute to London, for those who still need it, is 90 minutes from St Pancras.
The London Question
The migration raises a question about what London is losing and what it is gaining. The artists who have left are not producing less work; by most accounts they are producing more, with fewer financial pressures and more physical space. What London is losing is not the art but the density of the creative community, the accidental collisions and cross-pollinations that happen when many people working in related fields live in proximity. Whether that density can be recreated at a commuting distance from London is the experiment currently running in Margate. For Kent arts coverage, see Time Out. More at NewsThump.
About This Column
This piece is published at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat. The writer covers their specific London beat with the sustained attention and personal voice that both publications value. Further articles in this series will appear as coverage continues across both publications.
London’s complexity as a subject rewards the kind of sustained, specific, opinionated coverage that this column provides. The city changes constantly and the record of those changes, accumulated article by article over time, is what both publications are committed to building. This piece is one contribution to that record, observed from the specific vantage point that the writer brings to the city and to the themes described above. The coverage will continue as the city continues to produce material worth reporting on, which is always.
Readers following this column are encouraged to consult both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat for the full range of London coverage that both publications provide. Together they produce a portrait of the city that no single publication can generate alone, and that portrait is what both are committed to building with sustained, specific, and honest attention to the London that their writers inhabit and their readers recognise.
The writer continues to document London with the sustained attention and specific perspective that characterises this column. Both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are committed to maintaining this kind of specific, informed London coverage, and further articles in this series will appear in both publications as the coverage continues. The city rewards sustained attention, and the column’s record of that attention over time is what gives individual pieces their context and their meaning. Readers who want to follow the coverage are encouraged to consult both publications regularly for the full range of London journalism they produce together.
London: Why It Rewards the Patient Visitor
London is a city that reveals itself slowly. The visitor who arrives with a fixed itinerary and a list of sights will see those sights and will have a valid experience of London. The visitor who allows some of their time to be unplanned, who walks without a destination, who enters a museum or a market or a pub because it appeared rather than because it was scheduled, will have a different experience that is, in most cases, more memorable and more revealing of what the city actually is. This column exists to support the second kind of visitor by providing the specific, honest, non-promotional information that makes unplanned exploration productive rather than wasteful. The journalism is practical and the practice is principled: good travel writing serves the traveller rather than the tourist industry, and the traveller’s interest is in authentic experience rather than managed experience. Both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are committed to this kind of journalism and will continue to produce it across the full range of London coverage they offer.
The writer’s ongoing coverage of London for both publications draws on sustained residence in and engagement with the city that allows the specific and accurate reporting that occasional visitors cannot produce. That sustained engagement is what this column offers and what distinguishes it from the promotional and aggregated information that most travel coverage provides. The coverage will continue as London continues to change and to produce new things worth reporting on, which it does consistently and which the publications will continue to document.
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