MARGATE MUSEUM

As a Trustee of the Margate Museums Trust, I offered my services pro-bono to design and administrate the Trust’s first renovation project. This was considered the first phase of a larger masterplan and involved the overhaul of the Margate Museum’s reception and entrance area, including opening-up an historic doorway to create a dedicated wheelchair access point. We created a new shop area, to help improve the charity’s income. This involved custom-designed walnut joinery- expertly fabricated by Margate-based The Shop Joinery - for the shop display area and new reception desk. We were also able to restore the original parquet flooring and reinstate the original room proportions with the removal of a suspended ceiling and the old reception cabin. The concept for the refurbishment was to give the space the feel of a handsome study with library, respecting the heritage setting with a modern approach to the detailing. The spatial changes help to improve the visitor experience and the Museum’s operations.

Listed Building Consent was achieved for the alterations, which is located within Margate’s Conservation Area.

The project completed in June 2019.

Photography was generously provided pro-bono by Joel Knight.  The project was featured in the Autumn 2019 issue of the Margate Mercury.

I was a founding Trustee of the Margate Museums Trust, from 2014-2019, operating the Old Town Museum and Tudor House buildings. It was my honour to serve the Trust over this 5-year period on various aspects of the buildings’ operations and strategic direction. I also worked on a pro-bono basis on architectural feasibility studies and assisted with the graphic design of the Museum and Tudor House rebrand and external signage applications. Following our success with establishing the Trust as a charitable organisation, I was able to secure the Trust’s first successful grant bid with the National Lottery Heritage Fund to stage the Turner’s Margate exhibition, which ran alongside the 2019 Turner Prize exhibition at Turner Contemporary, Margate.