The Pride Art Map: How Margate Became a Queer Gallery

It started with a lockdown idea and a memory of Hackney Jumble Trails.

In 2020, Pride wasn't possible in any form we recognised. No parade. No stages. No crowds on the seafront. The pandemic shut all of that down. For an LGBTQIA+ community that relies on visibility and gathering, that loss was real. But it also created space to think differently about what Pride could be.

Alex Menace had the idea that if people couldn't come together in one place, take the art to them. Spread it across the town. Put it in windows, cafés, shops. Make Margate itself the venue. Platform LGBTQIA+ artists as well as driving people to businesses that were struggling during the pandemic. 

That first Pride Art Map was relatively small. A handful of artists, a handful of spaces. But it worked. The then PAM curator, Xander Noble did a ‘Red Flags’ exhibition as an Open Call, displayed in The Margate School windows. Chu decorated the front of Bar Nothing with one-story-high letters reading PRIDE. People walked the town and found queer creativity in places they hadn't expected. The DIY / punk spirit was the point. No gatekeepers. No selection panel. No gallery hierarchy. If you had work and a space willing to show it, you were in.

Red Flags 2020

What it is now

Six years on, the map takes an entire month and most of the town to contain. Local artist and gallerist Kavel Rafferty now runs PAM, and under her care, it has grown into one of the most distinctive parts of Margate Pride’s Festival. Kavel, along with Pride Director Mia Pollak, have developed opportunities for Open Call gallery commissions, multiple artists to receive stipends to support the making of their work, curated shows alongside programming such as talks and drawing sessions to compliment the art.

Every August, Margate Pride Festival launches the Friday before the first weekend of the the month with PAM, the Pride Art Map. Dozens of exhibitions launch at once and there’s a real buzz around town venue hopping and being immersed in art shows. Most shows open on Friday evening and run for days or weeks after. The map stretches from the Old Town up through Cliftonville, out to Walpole Bay, and into community spaces and borrowed windows in between.

In 2025, over 70 venues took part. Galleries, yes. But also a patisserie, a pizza restaurant, a bookshop, a guesthouse, a tidal pool, a soul café, abandoned shop windows, a wine bar, a pole studio, and a crab museum. Artists showed paintings, installations, photography, illustration, textiles, and film. Work appeared in shop windows, on walls, in café corners.

That range is the whole idea.

How it works

The Pride Art Map runs as an open call. Artists, makers, collectives, and venues register through a simple form on the Margate Pride website. The deadline for printed listings is the end of June. Online listings stay open until mid-July. There is no fee and no jury. Emerging artists show along with established ones.

Artists find their own venues (often with the support of Kavel). That is a feature, not a limitation. It means the map grows through real relationships between artists and the businesses that support them. A café that debuts in August often returns the following year. Venues that join as hosts become part of the Pride community. The map builds itself as it builds community.

Why it matters

The art is free to see. You don't need a ticket, a membership, or some reason to walk into a gallery. You just walk the town. Margate Pride has always understood that arts engagement isn't equally distributed. The most direct way to change that is to bring work to people, not wait for people to come to the work.

For artists, the map offers something concrete. Showing work as part of PAM puts it in front of a large, engaged audience. It connects you to a network of LGBTQIA+ and allied artists, venues, and organisations. And it places your work in a context that means something: a town with a proud queer history and a community that takes art seriously.

The impact shows up in real ways. Artists have made work for the map and won prizes and residencies off the back of it. Venues that opened their windows to one small painting have grown into year-round supporters of queer arts. Visitors who came for Pride Day have returned for the exhibitions and come back the following year.

PAM in 2026

This year is Margate Pride's tenth anniversary. The Pride Art Map returns throughout August, launching on 31 July. We’ll see the Heritage Hotline project exhibited in Pie Factory Gallery, Valerie Potter at Kavel Rafferty Projects, Charlee Piper at Store Collective, shows curated by Leo Cameron, Kit Griffiths, Grace Saint and many more yet to be announced. Anniversary commissions by artists Krishna, Orla Carolyn, Milly Aburrow and Rory Draper hosted at studio gallery spaces Crate and Limbo. 

This year, the Open Call commission will return for an LGBTQIA+ artist aged 55+. This is a fully funded exhibition with a commission fee. Three years in, 2024 saw an LGBTQ+global majority artist won by Liquat Rasul, 2025 hosted an LGBTQ+ disabled artist, won by Lady Kitt. Both powerful shows, demonstrating the breadth of topics explored by LGBTQIA+ artists.

All the commissions and Festival costs are covered by Margate Pride via grants they have been awarded from the likes of Arts Council England, National Lottery Community Fund, National Lottery Heritage Fund and donations. No tax payers money has gone towards Margate Pride! Rather the opposite - Margate Pride has raised hundreds of thousands and generated much more for the local economy.  

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Dozens of artists have shown over the years, including Brogan Bertie, Ellisa Cray, Rachael House, Anka Dabrowska, Liquat Rasul, Rhiannon Adam, Lady Kitt, Abi Birkinshaw, Mareike Günsche, Kit Griffith, James Tailor, Simon Foxton, Keziah, Ted Rogers, Jane Dinmore, James Tuitt, Kadir Karababa, Ty Lock, Jane Dinmore and many many more. Here’s to many more years of creativity and expression. 

If you have work to show, a space to offer, or both: the form is open. You don't need a gallery. You don't need a long CV. You need something to say and somewhere in Margate to say it.

Upload your exhibition here: https://www.margatepride.org.uk/events and find out what’s going on in Thanet from the LGBTQIA+ community.