There wasn't a cloud in the sky this morning as we set off to visit the gallery that opened earlier this year in Margate. It is a big, airy building, and the exhibition was about youth culture. One interesting piece had "then and now" photographs and comments from people pictured locally. "Then" had them in their hippy, skinhead, rocker or goth garb as teenagers, with current pictures showing how they look as adults.
The modern steel building sandwiched between the Margate harbour buildings and the Victorian buildings behind, some of them looking on the verge of dereliction.
One intent of putting the gallery here was to help regenerate the town through making it more of a destination for visitors, rather than simply a day out on the beach. I think the jury is still out on that. In the past few years there has been lots of retail development on the edge of the Thanet conurbation around Westwood Cross, meaning that town centre shops are rapidly reducing in number. The increased shopping traffic around what was already a bottleneck may also be a disincentive to visitors, judging by the miles of crawling traffic that we passed on our way home.
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