Folkestone on the border: a dislocated city living “in-between”
Once the main pivot for passenger connection between France and England, Folkestone is a town on the littoral ‘edge’ of the country, with an urbanism that connects equally with land and sea. What does the future hold for this town now re-engaging with its remarkable histories, asks Irene Manzini Ceinar.
“As the first place where passengers arriving from Calais and Boulogne would pass through when setting foot on British soil, the Folkestone Customs House in the 19th century was a grand and impressive building, an epicentre of activity on the harbour” - The Decorators
On the south east coast of England, Folkestone was once the main pivot for connection between France and England, leading to structured and diversified identities imposed on the ground over the last 200 years. But capacity limitations at its harbour, and the new bypass of the Channel Tunnel led to the town falling on hard times. In recent years, attention has focused on the regeneration of Folkestone through art-making and creative actions.
As part of a series of events on situated practice and critical and creative placemaking, UCL Urban Laboratory hosted a one-day ‘Border’ symposium in this town situated on the littoral edge of England. The day considered Folkestone as an ‘edge’ space — one whose urbanism connects equally with water and land. It followed the success of the previous two events: Gateway, at UCL’s Bloomsbury campus (14 September 2017) and Periphery, at Here East on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (7 October 2017). All of the events were hosted in collaboration with the Folkestone Triennial arts festival, with additional support from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
The final event, which took place in the Quarterhouse arts centre, brought together practitioners and thinkers, and was marked by interdisciplinary interventions reflecting on the meaning of “border”, drawn on the speakers individual approaches in recognizing the spatial qualities of interstitial sites, making me and, I’m sure many other people, aware of the incredible value and potential of these “in-between” places.
During the morning, an incisive contribution about the future masterplan proposal for the regeneration of Folkestone Harbour was held by Friedrich Ludewig, director of architecture firm ACME Studio, who is proposing a new integrated project between the private and public realm. This keynote was followed by a response by Jonathan Ward, a researcher at the University of Leeds, about shared benefits coming from the new design proposal, critiquing its perceived imposition on local communities and the influence of artists on urban practices: “Who’s benefit?”, “Is it ethical that artists create buzz around a city?”
Regarding the process of learning from the community and the local space, Lesley Hardy, a historian from nearby Canterbury Christ Church University, focused the attention of the discussants on engagement of local people in the process and the importance of “listening to a place and its history, instead of imposing on it”.
Before lunch, group walking tours around Folkestone were a useful moment of interaction, debate and meditation, permitting day-trippers such as us to feel a sense of understanding with the meaning of the place.
Triennial artist and local resident Diane Dever was our guide, taking the group from the Quarterhouse past the Glassworks Sixth Form Centre, and through the Minaret of HoyCheong Wong — a 2017 Triennial commission, whose intention was to give visibility to the Islamic Community Centre, housed in an industrial building on a suburban road. The walk proceeded to the magical place of Halfway to Heaven, another 2017 commission by Emily Peasgood, who, thanks to an interactive sound installation, brought the importance of the graveyard and its history back into attention, connecting people with environments that are forgotten or ignored. After many other interactive venues and a walk along the reopened, and now pedestrianised harbour rail track, the tour ended just on time for a lunch break on the harbour, characterized by a number of pop-up finger food vans.
For this year’s Triennial, Diane has been working with multidisciplinary design collective The Decorators to renovate the Harbour’s vacant Customs House. After decades of dereliction, it has reopened as the Urban Room Folkestone, part of a national network of urban rooms where people can come together to re-trace the history of the town through an open platform of discussion, debate and learning workshops to create a space that will hold the past in the present and learn and plan for the future of Folkestone.
During the afternoon, Diane highlighted the importance of Folkestone’s Urban Room as a social experience involving the local communities in the learning process. Therefore the old Folkestone Customs House today is an equal space, a place of “non-judgment” where people could understand the past history and the coming opportunities for a place.
Following reflections on public responsibility and the duality between communities and commissions by writer and art critic JJ Charlesworth, the 2017 Triennial theme of “double-edge” acquired relevance for Princess Marilyn Douala Manga Bell, co-founder of Doual’art, a non-profit arts centre in Douala, Cameroon. As a coordinator of Salon Urbain de Douala, she explained the importance of archiving memory and, at the same time, developing strategies of sharing knowledge.
Overall, a clear message emerged during the event; re-engaging with histories of place is a primary step to be aware of the wide possibilities of a border place, facing the overlapped identities which are able to define the community’s sense of belong. While contribution to knowledge is fundamental in order to sensitize people and activate marginal places, the obvious question to be considered has to be ‘What does it mean to be living on the edge?’
- You can view photographs from all three days of the EDGE: Situated Practice in Art, Architecture and Urbanism series on Flickr.
Irene Manzini Ceinar is an architect, urban designer, and an MRes Interdisciplinary Urban Design student at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. You can follow her on Twitter at @irene_manzini.
Thank you to Lou Johnson for the photography of the symposium.
