Ramsgate Fantasy Travel Network

In this walk & workshop we looked at the history of travel & transport in Ramsgate and uncovered some of the stranger ways of moving from A to B that have been found elsewhere. We explored the town, starting at the station, and thought about how the different parts of it are connected. We then brought these elements together to create a set of fantasy travel solutions to make Ramsgate better connected.

The RFTN was commissioned as part of the Creative Isle Community Rail Partnership, a collaboration between Turner Contemporary and Thanet District Council with support from South Eastern Railway.

This 2km walk led participants on a slightly circuitous route between Ramsgate Station and the centre of the town & harbour, design to give people as full a sense of the layout of the town as possible. At various points along the route we paused to unearth unexpected facts around Ramsgate’s transport history and discuss participant’s own experiences of similar & related aspects of travel & transport. Our aim was to give people a chance to look at Ramsgate through fresh eyes, gather ideas and explore their own relationship with the town. At the end participants were asked to create a personal mental map based on key places of interest. We also created a questionnaire to assess participants’ travel habits and to look for gaps in Ramsgate’s transport infrastructure which was discussed along the route and completed at the end.

The workshop took the material & ideas from the walk used that to generate a set of fantasy travel schemes. We developed a simple game of chance as a mechanism for providing a brief for each contributor. This aimed to provide enough direction to be helpful while giving people enough latitude to make full use of their imagination.

Participants created a model using simple craft materials to illustrate their fantasy transport scheme. These models were photographed and small scale reinterpretations will be incorporated onto a large scale 3d relief map of Ramsgate to create a unique interconnected transport map exploring the connections and potential methods of transport centred around the station and beyond.

A summary of the workshop outcomes is on display in the ticket hall of Ramsgate Train Station from 18th May to the 16th June. This includes panels describing a selection of the participant’s proposals together with the large scale 3 dimensional map of Ramsgate with our interpretations of the original models.