THE BONFIRE OF REALITY..

This weekend saw the long awaited official opening of the new Turner Contemporary Gallery in downtown Margate.   When the project was first announced some years ago, the original intention was to place the gallery a little offshore, but spiralling costs and common sense meant that the project had to be revised, so the gallery now stands on the site where the great JMW Turner apparently once lived.

I know that man does not live by bread alone and that there is a place for culture in any civilised society, but I have often wondered whether Margate is really the right place for the Turner Gallery.   Now, I have nothing against Margate, especially as it needs all the help it can get, but to imagine that its local economy will be transformed by this new `attraction` is bordering on the fanciful.  

Margate and the Thanet area of Kent needs real investment for real jobs, especially since the recent demise of the Pfizer complex at nearby Sandwich - jobs that will help sustain the local economy throughout the year including the long, dark, depressing winters.   The problem with the Turner Gallery clientele is that it is very likely to be seasonal and limited to those  of an artistic bent.   Just how many will make return journeys to this distant outpost of north Kent remains to be seen, but my suspicion is that, once you`ve seen it, you`ve seen it and, to be honest, what else is there in Margate to keep you interested in coming back?

Perhaps it might have helped a little if the official opening ceremony had been conducted by people of substance, someone with presence, an inspirational national figure.   Instead, in a desperate pandering to `local connections,` we had the unprepossessing Tracey Emin and the charmless ivory tickler, Jools Holland, on the basis that Emin was brought up in Margate (maybe that`s her problem) and Holland has a place in Cooling, some 40 miles away from Turner country.  (Incidentally, it seems that Holland is a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Kent.   Just shows you what a bit of ivory tickling and an irascible persona can do for you.)

For all of that, I wish the project well, but I fear the reality is that, despite its subject matter, it is £17million of mainly public money that might have been better spent on bringing real prospects to the good folk of Thanet, rather than bringing transient cultural enlightenment to  an area with bigger priorities.   Anyone who thinks differently is, of course, entitled to do so, but they may be the ones who are still living in Dreamland.