Isle of Rydesgate ‘Model High Street’

Front of Rydesgate postcard artwork by @KavelRafferty

Theresa Smith, standing with the ‘Isle of Rydesgate’ feature in the Ramsgate exhibition.

Old postcard of the model village in Ramsgate, removed in 2003. This was part of the inspiration for the project.

Illustration of the Lloyds bank building in Ramsgate by Paul Naudin.

Photo of one of the Rydesgate templates being coloured in and designed into a new shop front for the exhibition.

Twin Towns is part of the Cultural Programme for Historic England’s High Street Heritage Action Zone project.

About the Project:

Mooch was commissioned in October 2020 by Historic England as part of their High Street Heritage Action Zone cultural programme called Twin Towns and was 1 of 6 creative practices that connected 2 HSHAZ towns.

We twinned Ramsgate in Kent and Ryde on the Isle of Wight, coastal resorts with many similarities. Using the varied and historic architecture in these town centres as inspiration, we created public exhibitions of a new version of the buildings on a fantasy island called Rydesgate. Our aim was to encourage a leap of imagination, invite people to design their own shop and re-think how we use town centres.

Have you walked past a building a thousand times and still don’t know what it really looks like? Is it only when your friends and family visit and you act as their tour guide that you bother to look up at where you live? Ramsgate and Ryde are coastal resorts with many connections, from hovercraft to Queen Victoria, but also a rich Georgian and Victorian architectural heritage which is often taken for granted and becomes invisible and neglected. The objectives were to:

· Bring those buildings into people’s homes in a fun and accessible way.

· Give the public a chance to really study, appreciate and re-imagine these beautiful structures.

· Connect the two resort towns and celebrate the similarities.

· Share a sense of being part of the HSHAZ big idea.

· Consider both the lost and retained characteristics of the High Streets and imagine how a change of fortune could have shaped the towns now.

· Offer a creative/craft experience that appeals across ages and cultures alongside information about the importance of heritage and the benefits to the 2 towns of preserving this.

· Get residents to tell themselves that they are lucky to live in such an amazing place.

Looking at another town with comparable characteristics would facilitate a review of both places and enable residents and the wider audience to not only enjoy the familiar past, but also enjoy a new vision for those buildings.

High Streets Heritage Action Zones’ Cultural Programme

The £7.4 million Cultural Programme is part of the £95 million High Streets Heritage Action Zone initiative, which is currently working across over 60 English high streets. It is funded with £40 million from the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport’s Heritage High Street Fund, £52 million from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Future High Streets Fund, and a further £3 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Cultural activity funded by the local grants scheme is planned to take place over three years, in tandem with the national commissions organised by Historic England. For the national commissions, artists will work with communities and co-produce artworks inspired by England’s changing high streets. Together, the local grants scheme and the national commissions make up the Cultural Programme. To find out more visit: www.HistoricEngland.org.uk/HighStreetCulture

The Creation of Rydesgate

Empty shops are a major issue for many communities. Dan Thompson is an artist, writer, and the founder of ‘The Empty Shops Network’. He has been working alongside us here at Mooch to help and develop a vision for Rydesgate and brief the Broadstairs College students on the value and cultural significance of our High Streets. This was done in a Zoom workshop with students from the Art department. Mooch also invited them all to contribute to the project by observing and drawing selected buildings in Ramsgate. One of the students, Maddy, commented ‘I was interested by how unique each building is, I had never noticed the details before’.

Around the same time as the Broadstairs student’s participation, Mooch took part in the Government scheme called Kickstarter. This scheme allows businesses across the UK to employ a young person for a 6-month contract and allowed the project to expand further, become more detailed, increase exposure on social media and via direct contact with the public in the shop venues.

The aim of the project was to encourage thinking about local high streets, so we actively engaged with the general public via an open call. We asked people to choose from a list of 12 buildings from Ramsgate or 12 buildings from Ryde and draw templates in a way that could be easy to colour and, once assembled, could become a 3D model.

As the project progressed, similarities between the two towns were becoming more apparent. Both Ramsgate and Ryde not only had the common interest of being Heritage action zones (HAZ), but other similarities, including declining tourism, active heritage communities, hovercraft services and historic abbeys. The decision was made to create a new town that was the best of both places and so the Isle of Rydesgate was conceived.

As the ‘Isle of Rydesgate’ vision expanded, artist Kavel Rafferty designed and developed a fantastic post card, representing our fantasy coastal town, using a colour palette that represents the seaside aesthetic that we wanted to replicate. These colours are also reflected in the exhibition maps designed by Ramsgate illustrator PatrickGeorge. The map includes street names from both Ramsgate and Ryde and was printed at 5m x 2.5m on to lino, so that once the exhibition was finished, they could be donated to local schools in both areas to teach them about historic High Streets.

Once the templates were received, we issued craft packs so that anyone could receive one and design their own shop, creating what they would like to see in their High Streets. We had some fantastic designs sent back to us including information centres, cat cafes, ‘Rydesgate’ leisure centres, a zero-waste recycling plant and many other inventive shops to populate the exhibition.

The Ramsgate exhibition took place in an empty shop from 23rd June 2021 – 10th July 2021 on Ramsgate’s High Street. Our walk-in space included workshops where the public were invited to participate and to leave a comment ‘Post-it’ for our wall behind the fantasy island. We arranged for many students on work experience from Broadstairs college to assist with the set up, photographing and invigilation of the show.

The exhibition was then taken over to Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, and exhibited from 17th July 2021 – 8th August 2021 in the old Elizabeth Packs building on Cross Street. This building was selected as one of the final templates to be made into craft packs, as it holds such a significance in the town and is a new creative project for the town called Department, run by the excellent Ryde Arts and Shademakers UK.

Summary

The project animated and made use of empty shop space and encouraged discussion around the plight of the High Street in England, but specifically Ryde and Ramsgate. The value of an historic town centre was also highlighted and underlined why the investment in historic High Streets by Historic England is so necessary. People were invited to “look up” to study and appreciate where they lived. The feedback as to what shops were needed and the diversity of the designs from the public was just extraordinary, so imaginative, and often deeply compassionate in their concern for the needs of the community in the broadest sense. The detail of the public vision for the Isle of Rydesgate outlines the need for community spaces where people can meet, be creative and care for each other. Hopefully this aspiration can be realised in our real town centres.

Huge thanks to all who helped with drawing and colouring in our templates but also to:

Ramsgate Town Council (for sponsoring our project)

Ramsgate Town Promoter