Art & Design Saturday Club at The Margate School. A free programme for 13-16-year-olds.
About our 2025 Club
Our 2025 Club took place over 15 Saturdays from January to June. We led workshops covering a wide range of mediums, concepts, and creative practices, nurturing curiosity, encouraging experimentation, and offering insights into possible futures in the arts, all within a supportive environment.
We collaborated with a rotating roster of local artists, each sharing their own practices and skills. Tutors included Zelda Solomon, Polly Brannan (Open School East), Silva Gordon-Valenzuela, Colton Kempf and Mina Healy, and was coordinated by artist-filmmaker Lucia Coppola. Students were challenged to think both creatively and critically to explore new concepts and skills.
Themes and practices explored included: utopias and ceramics; locality; public art and monuments; flags; political art and movements; identity; surrealism and collage; creative writing and DIY zines; printmaking; sound art; curating and exhibition-making; galleries and designing our own art spaces; performance art and cabaret; photography and staging reality; and animation.
“Being able to express myself freely in a Club where the teaching is more collaborative has helped me to develop my skills.” - Club Member
Students also took part in a masterclass designed by the National Saturday Club. Ours was with Jim Le Fevre, who is a BAFTA and BAA (British Animation Awards) award
winning animation director with over 20 years’ experience making commercials, title sequences and TV animation. We will be taking part in the national Summer Show and graduation in July, where Saturday Club students nationwide exhibit their work at Somerset House.
“The Club gave me a clear direction to focus on and provided opportunities that I would never have been able to have on my own” - Club Member
Why it matters
The majority of our students are from widening participation backgrounds, which is why it’s essential the programme remains free and accessible to all.
Demand has been incredibly high and we were oversubscribed this year, so we’re eager to expand and reach even more young people in the future. As funding for creative projects becomes increasingly competitive, we’re fundraising in any way we can. That’s why we’re reaching out to our community for support.
"In the 10 years after 2009, spending per pupil in England fell by nearly 10% in real terms. As support staff have been cut, overstretched teachers have less capacity to run choirs or put on school plays…Because arts subjects require space and resources, they are often most vulnerable to budget cuts." - The Guardian view on arts education: a creativity crisis | Editorial
As funding cuts continue, creative courses are often the first to be reduced, leaving young people, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds, with fewer opportunities to pursue a career in the arts. Art is being squeezed out of the national curriculum, and many students are unaware of the exciting and life changing creative pathways available to them, as well as the positive impact art can have on their wellbeing.
Our Saturday Club bridges this gap, offering local young people the art education they deserve. As the only National Saturday Club for art and design in Kent, your support is vital to ensuring creativity has a future in our community.
About The National Saturday Club
The National Saturday Club network provides the foundation for 13–16-year-olds across the country to study subjects they love at their local university, college or cultural institution, for free. At least half of the places will go to students from widening participation backgrounds.
As a powerful, countrywide network of shared knowledge and best practice, the model represents an exceptional opportunity to build young people’s creative skills and embolden them to become the next generation of innovators and imaginative thinkers. It also serves to connect educators and industry professionals so young people are better informed about the choices that exist for further education and rewarding careers.
Plans for our 2026 Club & Recruitment
Join thousands of Young People across the country who are choosing to spend their Saturdays learning new skills and working on creative projects at our Art & Design Saturday Club.
Dates for 2026 TBC - check for updates in August 2025.
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Image credit: David Babaian