Wel come

The Margate School (TMS) is a diverse creative community of artists, makers, students, academics and volunteers located in the vibrant coastal town of Margate, Kent. As a not-for-profit postgraduate liberal arts school at the heart of this community, we focus on the role of the arts in social and environmental justice.

You are offered postgraduate study with international links and the rigour of a qualification accredited by our partner Esä, a leading French higher education art school based in Dunkerque and Tourcoing. We take a radical, democratic approach to arts education, equipping you to envision, shape and navigate an uncertain future. TMS supports artists and makers to develop a sustainable creative practice and provides an exciting alternative to mainstream arts education.

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Incorporated in 2015, TMS takes inspiration from ground-breaking contemporary and past pioneering educational models such as Bauhaus and the Black Mountain College.

The Margate School is a place where people matter, guided by project-based collaborative learning in the expanded field, nurturing independent thinking.

On joining, you become part of a creative community: a collaborative and critical environment aimed at nurturing independent thought, effective learning, self-confidence and collective participation. Through our academic and openaccess programmes, events, workshops, residencies, guest lectures and exhibitions, we connect with a wide range of creatives and audiences to make positive contributions to the world we inhabit. We, the community that you will become part of, the people who study, work, teach, learn, research, experiment and practice here, continuously make a noticeable difference to the High Street we are situated in and our wider neighbourhood.

The British writer Harold Pinter said in his Nobel Prize 2005 lecture:

“In 1958 I wrote the following: ‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’

“I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”

We invite you to join us at TMS as a student to learn, make, show and to critically explore reality through the arts, yet at the same time position yourself as a self-aware citizen. We invite you to make the School your own and help establish beneficial and creative opportunities for Margate’s wider, diverse and less privileged communities. A School in and for Margate, inspired by Margate’s past and passionate about the future.