A NEW Arts Centre
for Canterbury
Imagine an arts centre where we can once again celebrate the city’s creativity in one place.
Where artists can exhibit, where workshops run all day and evening, where the art students from our three local universities can exhibit, where artists can create and collaborate, where we can see national or locally curated touring exhibitions and where we can all debate, discuss and enjoy our newly refurbished community building.
Our plans
- A refurbished world class flexible gallery space for national and local exhibitions and annual art shows
- Studios and learning spaces for practical workshops and adult education classes from painting to printing
- Programmes of community and youth art outreach
- Residencies for artists and scholarship support
- Collaborative projects and skills knowledge transfer with local art colleges – helping art students start their professional lives
- A place to meet, learn and talk about the arts and what they mean in our lives
Our impact
- A new public space – an ‘arts town hall’ for the city – signposting and hosting commercial, community and education arts offerings in the city, helping catalyse a whole new Canterbury creative arts scene.
- A centre that inspires participation and nurtures talent, making a measurable contribution to the health, well-being and quality of life of the city
- A centre that helps to revitalise the Westgate end of the High Street, and with a new accessible entrance at the rear on Westgate Hall Road facing the Westgate Hall and Curzon Cinema that helps kick start a whole new ‘arts quarter’
- A centre that catalyses a new arts dividend for Canterbury, boosting culture, tourism and the economy
There’s lots of art going on in galleries, schools, colleges, studios and workshops. But there is no arts centre where it all comes together, where the people of Canterbury can benefit from the wealth of art in this city, welcome in new ideas and create something special for the future.
Happily, we have a building that was bequeathed to the city by Sidney Cooper for this very purpose. Currently standing empty, we are asking the Council to hand it over to the Trust and community for use as an Arts Centre. Community support for our plans has been overwhelming.
We are the the Sidney Cooper Arts Trust (charity number ). We first came together in 2023 with one clear idea: building on the community arts legacy built by Sidney Cooper to encourage the Council, which owns the building, to hand it over as a community asset and let us breathe new life into the arts in Canterbury.
The Trust is ambitious for the role of the building, what will happen inside it, and its work with education partners and the community. Any development of the building should be exceptional and pioneering, raising the bar for arts centres and for what is expected of their role in the community, as a catalyst for artistic endeavour and a contributor to wellbeing across the whole community.
The new arts centre should not only embrace contemporary artistic and creative trends, but stretch the boundaries, the sphere for debate and interaction between practitioners. Our aim is for people to say about the Arts Centre ‘Have you seen what’s going on there? You must go and see for yourself’. The Sidney Cooper Arts Centre should have community, regional and national aspirations and impact.
The gallery is large (approx. 900 sq metres), made up of studios and exhibition spaces, and most is beautifully top lit and north facing – perfect for exhibiting and practising art. But the building will need substantial investment in its structure, heating, lighting, security and sustainability, and to reach our ambitions of:
- A modern reception and visitor experience with excellent accessibility, signage and navigation
- State of the art systems to support interactive and digital art exhibitions
- Flexible climate and humidity-controlled spaces that allow us to exhibit diverse forms of art from local and national touring exhibitions
- Innovative immersive experiences and on and off-site interpretation
- Fully equipped studio and workspaces and adaptable spaces for the community to meet, listen and debate
Canterbury is a city with huge strength in the arts – in its arts education, in its commercial galleries and in its art societies.
Much of that strength is due to the local Victorian artist Thomas Sidney Cooper, who founded an art gallery and school in 1868 on St Peter’s Street. The school was so successful it outgrew the building and moved off site where it became incorporated into what is now the University for the Creative Arts .
But today the Sidney Cooper building is empty, and an eyesore on Canterbury’s high street, past which millions of visitors a year walk to the city centre and the UNESCO world heritage site of the Cathedral.
It need not be like this. The city’s residents and its artistic community deserve better.
A newly refurbished Arts Centre will become a high-quality tourist attraction, complementing the Cathedral, Marlowe Theatre, The Beaney and other attractions. By encouraging visitors to stay longer in the city we can help increase tourism spend and support local hospitality businesses.
And our location in the high street next to the historic Westgate Tower, will help attract investment to that area of the city. It will catalyse a new arts quarter through linkages at the back of the building with the Westgate Hall and Curzon Cinema and proximity to the Marlowe Theatre.
Our plans directly supports the aims of the Levelling Up funded work, and the current Council Local Plan and culture strategy in preparation, both of which aim to celebrate past history, attract new visitors and private investment, making the city a more beautiful and sustainable place to live, work, learn and visit, focused on the city’s rich heritage and culture.
A newly opened Arts Centre will hope to echo the success of Turner Contemporary in Margate and other regeneration arts-focussed projects across Kent and the South East, including Creative Folkestone, the Hastings Contemporary, The De La Warr at Bexhill and Towner in Eastbourne, which have balanced community need with national standard art shows to bring revenue to old town centres.
Get in touch
Contact us to find out more or tell us what you’d like to see in the new Arts Centre.