The regeneration story

Education
Raising skills levels and aspirations within the local community is a key objective of the Creative Foundation and its partners. Several key projects are in hand which are designed to raise standards at secondary level, extend opportunities for life long learning and retain the town's young people within a vibrant creative economy.

Details of these projects and their role in transforming Folkestone's educational landscape can be found within the Plans and Visions section.

Business incubation
Job creation is one of the direct objectives of the Creative Quarter. SEEDA has established an Enterprise Gateway, providing support, signposting and networking opportunities for start-up businesses in the area.

By 2009, 200 jobs had already been directly created and sustained in the creative industries. Many more new jobs are anticipated as the project matures.

Outside the Quarter regeneration funding helped to create the Shearway Business Park, which is successfully attracting both private and public sector clients (including a major office for the Home Office).

As the regeneration projects make Folkestone a more attractive place to live so too they can be expected to attract more businesses to locate in the area.

Retail
Revitalising Folkestone’s retail economy always had to be a critical part of any regeneration plan.

The new 150,000 sq ft Bouverie Place shopping mall, located strategically to connect the two main shopping arcs of the town, opened in 2007. The project has attracted leading High Street names.

The local authority’s streets and squares initiative has also brought visible improvements to the older streets that fall between the new mall and the revitalised Creative Quarter.

Landscape and leisure
In Folkestone’s heyday the stretch of land that ran from the harbour west beneath the cliff was one of the town’s glories, a landscaped garden shading gradually into more natural trees and foliage.

This Coastal Park, as it has become, was the focus of one of the council’s first major regeneration projects in the latter half of the 1990s. The west section was tidied up, with new benches and picnic areas, but the greater part of the first phase went into the middle section of the park.

Funded by central government (via the South East England Development Agency SEEDA), the European Union and Shepway District Council, the £1.2 million project
• created the largest free adventure playground in the South East
• restored the historic “Zigzag Path” to the clifftop
• created a dramatic natural amphitheatre at the bottom of that path.

The first phase of the restoration opened in May 2000, and already attracts around half a million visitors every year.

At the same time a major coastal protection scheme has transformed the beaches beneath the Coastal Park, creating new sheltered bathing areas, a new walkway on the longest stone groyne (offering dramatic views along the coastline) and creating a very popular pedestrian link between Folkestone and Sandgate to the west.

How it comes together
All the different elements reinforce one another. Our work in education will bring new character to the town, as well as raising skills levels and opening new opportunities for young people here. The revitalised shops in the main part of the town will meet the everyday demands of residents, while the specialised retail environment of the Creative Quarter will make Folkestone a distinctive shopping destination, drawing people from outside the town as well as widening choice for locals.

More visitors will mean more success for all. Visitor attractions like the Coastal Park, Folkestone Book Festival and Folkestone Triennial will also bring more people through the streets; students will swell the potential audience for performance events at Quarterhouse, as well as contributing themselves to the creative life of the town.

Businesses, drawn to the enhanced quality of life here, will bring employment and increase the potential economy for retail spending, whether on groceries or on the outputs of the many artists choosing to live and work in the town.