Ramsgate Arts Festival Ltd works with local people and artists in Ramsgate and across Thanet, the public and private sector and arts partners to devise and produce high quality cultural projects and events. Since the inception of Ramsgate Arts as a commnity group in 2009, becoming a registered charity in 2012, the organisation has initiated and produced a wide range of cultural activities, projects and events for the benefit of local people. Our principal public activity has been the annual Ramsgate Festival, a celebration of place through multi-disciplinary arts, running from 2010 - 2019. In 2013 the charity became a partner in the Collaborative Touring Network, a national programme set up by Battersea Arts Centre thorugh Arts Council England's Strategic Touring Fund. As one of six partner towns across England, Ramsgate Arts launched a project called Looping the Loop, to create pan-Thanet festivals of contemporary live performance, bringing new theatre from across England to this local area, and suporting local artists to create new work to be presented alongside the national programme. In 2019 Looping the Loop was incorporated as a seperate Community Interest Company in order to widen the options on fundraising for its increasingly wide programme of activity. In the same year the Ramsgate Festival was passed to new leaders, becoming The Ramsgate Festival of Sound, which continues successfully. Ramsgate Arts continues to contribute to the well-being of local people and to the cultural landscape of Ramsgate, through supporting smaller and start-up groups to steer their work, prepare to fundraise and as a representative body whose expertise and experience feeds into local programmes and projects.

This year the charity continued in its support of new and smaller creative groups in Ramsgate, bringing its expertise and experience to the development of new initiatives in the town. Ramsgate continues to attract residents from the creative and cultural sectors, owed in some cases to the town’s history and strong heritage profile. This year the charity supported the Ramsgate Handmade & Vintage Fairs, which have been in existence since 2010 and continued its support of the CIC Looping the Loop, collaborating on this year’s Making More Waves professional development festival. The charity took a lead role developing Ramsgate Day, helping to increase the scale of this one-day festival. It is now an established annual celebration for the town, attracting some 1500 people and supported by MP Polly Billington and the Miss Ramsgate organisation. Ramsgate Arts also engaged the help of a young graphic designer to build an archival website to preserve a photographic history of the festivals run between 2010 – 2019. 

Fundraising this year was again carried out to support the Ramsgate Day initiative.