#jack middelburg

[boanerges20]

Franco Uncini /Kenny Roberts /Jack Middelburg /Barry Sheene Photo: [From Motocourse 1984-85]

[regioonlineofficial]

De Lamgatse brug over de Mark verbindt de gemeenten Moerdijk en Halderberge met elkaar. Deze brug moet vervangen worden omdat er houtrot is geconstateerd. De gemeenten Moerdijk en Halderberge zijn bezig met de voorbereidingen voor het vervangen van deze fiets- en voetgangersbrug. Om de overlast tot een minimum te beperken, wordt de brug vanaf februari 2024 gesloopt en daarna duurzaam en circulair opgebouwd. De nieuwe brug wordt voor meer dan 80% gemaakt uit hergebruikt materiaal. De werkzaamheden duren enkele maanden. Het hout van de oude brug wordt voor minimaal 75% hergebruikt voor de aanleg van steigers in de haven van Oudenbosch. De gemeenten Moerdijk en Halderberge hebben samen de aanbestedingsprocedure doorlopen. Er is voor gekozen om de kennis uit de markt te benutten door een specialistisch bouwteam samen te stellen. De sloop van de brug met hergebruik van het hout wordt uitgevoerd door Van Hese Infra B.V. uit Middelburg. De nieuwe circulaire brug wordt ontworpen door Meerdink bruggen B.V uit Winterwijk. De brug wordt voor meer 80% gemaakt uit hergebruikt materiaal. Planning Er wordt op dit moment gewerkt aan een voorlopig ontwerp. Vanaf februari 2024 wordt de brug eerst gesloopt vanaf het water met een drijvend ponton en kraanschip. De hergebruikte delen voor de nieuwe brugconstructie worden voor een groot deel in de fabriek gereedgemaakt en komen over het water aan bij de locatie. Door het werk op deze manier uit te voeren, is er een voor enkele maanden geen voetgangers- en fietsverkeer mogelijk over de brug. Ook is de stremming voor de vaart zo minimaal mogelijk. Samenwerking Moerdijk en Halderberge Wethouder Jack van Dorst, die in de gemeente Moerdijk onder meer over infrastructuur gaat: “Moerdijk heeft de afgelopen vijf jaar een mooie inhaalslag gemaakt met het onderhoud aan wegen en bruggen. In goede samenwerking met Halderberge hebben we onlangs de Markbrug op een innovatieve wijze gerenoveerd. Ik ben blij dat we opnieuw onze kennis en kracht bundelen voor de vlotte en duurzame vervanging van de Lamgatsebrug.” Hergebruik van het hout Uit onderzoek blijkt dat minimaal 75% van het hardhout van de huidige brug een tweede leven gegeven kan worden. De gemeente Halderberge gaat in 2024 de haven van Oudenbosch aanpakken. Het hout van de Lamgatsebrug wordt gebruikt om de steigers in de haven te vervangen. Thomas Melisse, wethouder openbare ruimte gemeente Halderberge: “We willen als overheid dat steeds meer mensen gaan nadenken over het slim toepassen van grondstoffen en over hergebruik. Dan moeten we dat zelf natuurlijk ook doen. Ik ben blij dat we het hout van de Lamgatsebrug wat herbruikbaar is kunnen gaan terugzien in de steigers in de haven van Oudenbosch als deze is aangepakt.”

[alfonslx2]

Jack Middelburg..

[fensterguck]

Jack Middelburg

[mv350]

Interview Jack Middelburg, Wil Hartog en Boet van Dulmen

[elkedagvakantie]

Jumping Jack: muziekfestival met ronkende motoren Op het TT circuit van Assen is van 9 tot en met 19 mei 2019: Jumping Jack, een grootse theatervoorstelling met rockmuziek en ronkende motoren over het leven van coureur Jack Middelburg.

[tarsilveira]

Jack Middelburg, Imola1982

[radio259nl]

Jong Ambon strikt 'crisismanager' Wijnands én opvolger Vergouwen

MIDDELBURG - Jack Wijnands moet er dit seizoen voor gaan zorgen dat Jong Ambon behouden blijft voor de derde klasse. Karl Vergouwen neemt het stokje dan volgend seizoen van hem over. http://dlvr.it/N2k6F7

[olivereliott]

Speed Block style: A Yamaha XZ 550 restomod

Every time Maarten Poodt completes another project, we feel like we’re looking at some obscure, classic Yamaha that we’ve never heard of. Which is exactly how the Dutch custom builder likes it.

Maarten has a penchant for Yamahas, and particularly the models that are hard to come by in the Netherlands. He mostly goes for a retro sportbike look, and nails the factory feel amazingly well. By the time he’s done, you’re questioning your knowledge of Yamaha’s back catalog.

Maarten used to build a bike a year, but got sidetracked for two years, making parts for other customizers and upholstering seats. Itching for a project of his own again, he picked up a 1983 XZ 550 and tore into it.

Also known as the Vision, the XZ 550 was only manufactured for two years. It was powered by a 552 cc, 70-degree V-twin motor, and was the first Yamaha with downdraft carbs. Unfortunately, those carbs also had an annoying off-idle stutter.

Maarten’s rebuilt the XZ 550 using a remarkable number of Yamaha factory parts from a bevy of different models. And that makes this one of the slickest parts bin specials we’ve ever seen.

Up front are the forks, yokes and clip-ons from an R6. The wheels are off an XS850, measuring 19 inches in front, and 18 inches out back. The rear shocks are from Hyperpro, and the brakes are a combination of modern MT-07 calipers and YZF600 discs.

Getting all those parts to play nice wasn’t easy. Maarten tells us the biggest job was manufacturing a new hub, so that he could run the XS850 rear wheel on the XZ 550’s shaft drive. Modifying the head angle for sharper steering was apparently a chore too.

The front forks needed editing to accommodate the new front wheel, and brackets had to be made up for the brakes. But everything looks like it belongs, and even the front fender looks OEM.

Maarten used the same pick-n-mix approach to piece together the XZ’s new bodywork, creating a silhouette that feels familiar.

The tank is stock, but Maarten hammered in indents for the clip-ons, and then added a bulge in the belly to maintain a capacity of 17 liters.

The fiberglass fairing comes from Dutch racer Jack Middelburg, and echoes Kenny Roberts’ RG500 race bike. (Maarten got it to fit by way of custom-built aluminum framework.) Just behind it are the stock clocks, repositioned in a one-off fiberglass housing.

Recognize that chunky tail section? It’s been borrowed from a Yamaha TZ, and finished off with a slim seat and a pair of embedded taillights. And if that license plate arrangement looks far too stock, that’s because it is—Maarten grabbed it from an R1, complete with red reflector and turn signals (plus the foot controls).

Lurking underneath the bodywork is a fully rebuilt motor, freshly tuned carbs that don’t stutter, and revised wiring with a smaller battery. The exhaust system consists of a pair of tightly tucked, custom-made stainless headers, terminating in a pair of Laser mufflers.

Picking a livery for the XZ550 was a no-brainer—it’s wrapped in King Kenny’s iconic yellow ‘speed block’ design. The wheels have even been redone in gold to match, and there are fresh finishes on everything from the frame to the engine casings.

It’s another flawless execution by Maarten. With any luck, he’s put the parts and seats business on hold, and is already working on his next instant classic.

Maarten Poodt Instagram | Images by Mark Meisner.

[motoplusmagazine]

Wegens succes twee extra voorstellingen Jumping Jack

De voorstelling Jumping Jack over het leven van Jack Middelburg is wegens succes met twee extra voorstellingen verlengd. Dat heeft... Lees verder: Wegens succes twee extra voorstellingen Jumping Jack http://dlvr.it/R4lVSq

[boanerges20]

Graeme Crosby | Jack Middelburg | Freddie Spencer

[samanthasroberts]

How do you rescue a seaside town? – BBC News

Image copyright ALAMY

Having been a model of gentility, Folkestone went into a slump. But its efforts to combat its problems and rebuild might be a model for others, writes Hannah Sander.

The seaside town of Folkestone was once the height of fashion.

International superstars Agatha Christie and Yehudi Menuhin were regular visitors. King Edward VII spent so much of his time in the Kent town that locals took to peering in the windows of the Grand Hotel, in order to spot him having illicit tea with his Folkestone mistress Alice Keppel (the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall).

Today, a strip of grand mansions along Folkestone’s seafront is boarded up. Stretches of sunny beach have become an overnight stop for parked lorries. A closed nightclub completes the scene.

Welcome to the British seaside. All along the coast, seaside towns are in trouble. In the south, authorities battle against the spread of London drug gangs, the tensions fuelled by a European migrant crisis, and a seaside school system which Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, has warned is failing children.

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s funicular railway in its Victorian prime

And yet only a few minutes’ walk along Folkestone beach, pop-up restaurants offer grilled sea bass, oysters and champagne to the tourists. In the past decade the town’s new art scene has attracted an affluent following.

Similar transformations are occurring in Margate and Weston-Super-Mare. So are fading seaside towns becoming trendy again?

The British seaside has not recovered from the collapse of the maritime and tourism industries. Populations in coastal towns tend to be older and less ethnically diverse. Coastal towns have higher rates of unemployment and more long-term health problems.

Richard Prothero, from the Office for National Statistics, has analysed 274 seaside destinations around England and Wales. “Not every coastal town is struggling,” he explains. “Some are doing very well and remain popular.” Nevertheless, his study revealed high levels of deprivation in many seaside resorts.

In Folkestone, ONS statistics reveal that education is a particular concern. “The biggest impact on school performance is parental engagement,” says Dr Tanya Ovenden-Hope, visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth. She has been monitoring six struggling academies around England.

“In coastal areas we are finding that parents have perhaps received poor education themselves, or education that didn’t lead to a good job. So school is not a priority for them. That makes it much harder to engage the children.”

Folkestone

Population: 46,698 (2011 census)

UK constituency: Folkestone and Hythe; MP – Damian Collins (Conservative)

Twinned with Boulogne-sur-Mer and Etaples-sur-Mer in France, and Middelburg in the Netherlands

Ovenden-Hope herself went to school in Folkestone. She worries about the impact of the town’s two grammar schools.

On the pavement of Folkestone’s shopping district, three local schoolgirls wave colourful signs. They have just completed a sponsored silence, and are now handing out free hot meals to Folkestone’s homeless population. “Schools in Folkestone have got a lot better,” says sixth-former Shrishma Adhikari. “But there seem to be a lot more homeless people now.” All three pupils believe unemployment is a growing problem.

In reality, coastal schools have the opposite problem – too many jobs, not enough staff. “Recruitment is a key issue,” Ovenden-Hope explains. “If you are a newly qualified teacher in your 20s, would you want to go to a very remote coastal school that will present you with huge challenges but with a limited social life? Equally, if you are a middle-aged teacher and a job comes up in a coastal school, you might discover there is no employment in the area for your spouse.”

The three pupils volunteering in Folkestone’s streets agree that the town can feel far-flung, despite High-Speed 1 trains racing through the fields. “We don’t really go to London,” Shrishma shrugs. “It’s too far away.”

Stuart Hooper, the director of intelligence for Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, fears that London is actually far too near.

“It is a new phenomenon – the County Lines,” he explains. “Kent and Essex have very good transport to London and so the London drug gangs have the opportunity to widen their market.”

Folkestone and Dover are among the southern towns being targeted by up to 180 drug gangs. Criminals in the capital, realising that the Metropolitan Police recognise their faces, have begun to recruit young people as drug mules travelling out to the countryside.

“We need to acknowledge that there are vulnerable young people being exploited,” Hooper explains. His team is working with the Met, as well as local addiction services, to monitor violence.

And yet coastal crime is not a new phenomenon. “Gangs and turf wars have been around since at least the 1960s with the mods and rockers, and going back before then,” Hooper says. In the 1930s, crime beside the sea was so prevalent that Graham Greene based his novel Brighton Rock (1938) on gang wars. Meanwhile the queen of crime, Agatha Christie, took a suite at Folkestone’s Grand Hotel to pen her thriller Murder on the Orient Express (1934), and returned to Folkestone regularly.

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s Grand Hotel, where Agatha Christie wrote Murder On The Orient Express

Another type of violence can already be found in the seaside streets. In August, Kent Police was forced to intervene in a clash between the English Defence League and local protest group Folkestone United. The scenes could have taken place a century ago, when an influx of Belgian World War One refugees and British empire soldiers turned Folkestone into one of the most diverse cities in the world. Then as now, a wave of anti-immigration rhetoric followed.

The surge in support for UKIP has been driven by seaside towns such as Grimsby in Lincolnshire and Clacton in Essex. As the starting point for the channel tunnel, Folkestone has been central to the debate around immigration. In 2013 UKIP Leader Nigel Farage declared that he might stand as an MP in Folkestone (he later switched to the seaside region of Thanet).

“The Channel Tunnel drew everything away from here, from town, but it is coming back,” explains the waiter in Googies Art Cafe, a trendy burger and craft beer joint in Folkestone’s art district. “Folkestone has completely changed. For one thing, it has become a lot more multicultural. It used to be white, white, white. Eventually the town will be as trendy as Brighton.”

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s Creative Quarter

Trendiness, it seems, can transform troubled seaside towns into European hotspots. Richard Prothero points to the colossal variation between different seaside towns, sometimes near to each other. Whereas the statistics show Blackpool to be highly deprived, neighbouring Lytham St Annes is thriving. The Lancashire town has a renowned links golf course to draw in tourists.

Elsewhere, Salcombe in Devon has performed better than other seaside towns nearby. The upmarket clothes brand Jack Wills was founded in Salcombe, helping the town earn its nickname of Chelsea-on-Sea.

In Sussex, Hove has borrowed the street cred of neighbouring Brighton, welcoming sister campuses for the university. Thousands of visitors are filling the hotels and restaurants of Bournemouth, this season promoted to the Premier League for the first time.

Margate has capitalised on its connection to Tracey Emin, with the Turner Contemporary art gallery and an installation from artist Grayson Perry. In Weston-Super-Mare, tourism experts expect Banksy’s Dismaland to add 7m to the local economy.

Image copyright PA

Image caption Folkestone’s own Banksy mural, entitled “Art Buff”

Folkestone has benefitted from some good fortune. The flotation of local business Saga – an insurance and travel company aimed at the over 50s – prompted owner Roger De Haan to pour huge sums of money into regeneration. The result was the Creative Foundation.

“In 2002, the area around the seafront was the most run-down part of town,” says Alastair Upton, chief executive of the Creative Foundation. “Roger De Haan bought buildings in the whole area and restored them. Many of the buildings had taken a battering from the environment. The river runs below us and basements still flood periodically. But 90 of these buildings are now available for artistic activity.”

The Creative Foundation has launched a triennial art show, a new music and performance venue, a book fair, a public art collection featuring works by Tracey Emin, Mark Wallinger and Richard Wentworth, and has created 300 jobs. More importantly, it has given the town a reputation as an arts hub.

Beth Gibbs manages the Lilford Gallery Folkestone, which opened over the summer, and is found on a winding cobbled street newly crowded with art shops and cafes. Until recently the street had been dilapidated. “We are based in Canterbury,” Gibbs explains, “and were looking to expand when I heard about the Old High Street. There is a buzz about this area in the art world.”

Image caption The Old High Street, Folkestone

“Our main market is people coming down from London,” Gibbs says, “and a growing number coming over from France. Without the Old High Street, Folkestone would be just a bog-standard English seaside town.”

The impact of an arts revival is hard to assess.

In the 12 years since the regeneration began there has been very little research linking the town’s economic state or the number of tourists with the new arts scene. The town’s economic health has mirrored the country at large. Vast sums have been spent on the regeneration and yet the ONS still rates Folkestone as “deprived”. But Upton insists that Folkestone’s new arts scene has had a broader impact than that.

“You would be measuring the wrong thing if you measured visitor numbers. Success is a funny thing. There are some measurables – how does the town feel? What are the employment possibilities like? Are jobs secure and well paid?

“But there are also questions of the identity of a town. I think we have done a huge amount on this – changing the way people perceive Folkestone. There is a growing sense of self-confidence and pride for the town.”

At Googies, the staff has noticed the impact of Folkestone’s new reputation. “We are part of the Folkestone creative scene too – we all promote each other. In the past 10 years Folkestone has completely changed. People will soon start to realise that. We have sun, sand and sea. We have a better life.”

Image copyright iStock

Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine’s email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/17/how-do-you-rescue-a-seaside-town-bbc-news/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/how-do-you-rescue-a-seaside-town-bbc-news/

[alfonslx2]

Jack Middelburg..

[adambstingus]

How do you rescue a seaside town? – BBC News

Image copyright ALAMY

Having been a model of gentility, Folkestone went into a slump. But its efforts to combat its problems and rebuild might be a model for others, writes Hannah Sander.

The seaside town of Folkestone was once the height of fashion.

International superstars Agatha Christie and Yehudi Menuhin were regular visitors. King Edward VII spent so much of his time in the Kent town that locals took to peering in the windows of the Grand Hotel, in order to spot him having illicit tea with his Folkestone mistress Alice Keppel (the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall).

Today, a strip of grand mansions along Folkestone’s seafront is boarded up. Stretches of sunny beach have become an overnight stop for parked lorries. A closed nightclub completes the scene.

Welcome to the British seaside. All along the coast, seaside towns are in trouble. In the south, authorities battle against the spread of London drug gangs, the tensions fuelled by a European migrant crisis, and a seaside school system which Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, has warned is failing children.

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s funicular railway in its Victorian prime

And yet only a few minutes’ walk along Folkestone beach, pop-up restaurants offer grilled sea bass, oysters and champagne to the tourists. In the past decade the town’s new art scene has attracted an affluent following.

Similar transformations are occurring in Margate and Weston-Super-Mare. So are fading seaside towns becoming trendy again?

The British seaside has not recovered from the collapse of the maritime and tourism industries. Populations in coastal towns tend to be older and less ethnically diverse. Coastal towns have higher rates of unemployment and more long-term health problems.

Richard Prothero, from the Office for National Statistics, has analysed 274 seaside destinations around England and Wales. “Not every coastal town is struggling,” he explains. “Some are doing very well and remain popular.” Nevertheless, his study revealed high levels of deprivation in many seaside resorts.

In Folkestone, ONS statistics reveal that education is a particular concern. “The biggest impact on school performance is parental engagement,” says Dr Tanya Ovenden-Hope, visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth. She has been monitoring six struggling academies around England.

“In coastal areas we are finding that parents have perhaps received poor education themselves, or education that didn’t lead to a good job. So school is not a priority for them. That makes it much harder to engage the children.”

Folkestone

Population: 46,698 (2011 census)

UK constituency: Folkestone and Hythe; MP – Damian Collins (Conservative)

Twinned with Boulogne-sur-Mer and Etaples-sur-Mer in France, and Middelburg in the Netherlands

Ovenden-Hope herself went to school in Folkestone. She worries about the impact of the town’s two grammar schools.

On the pavement of Folkestone’s shopping district, three local schoolgirls wave colourful signs. They have just completed a sponsored silence, and are now handing out free hot meals to Folkestone’s homeless population. “Schools in Folkestone have got a lot better,” says sixth-former Shrishma Adhikari. “But there seem to be a lot more homeless people now.” All three pupils believe unemployment is a growing problem.

In reality, coastal schools have the opposite problem – too many jobs, not enough staff. “Recruitment is a key issue,” Ovenden-Hope explains. “If you are a newly qualified teacher in your 20s, would you want to go to a very remote coastal school that will present you with huge challenges but with a limited social life? Equally, if you are a middle-aged teacher and a job comes up in a coastal school, you might discover there is no employment in the area for your spouse.”

The three pupils volunteering in Folkestone’s streets agree that the town can feel far-flung, despite High-Speed 1 trains racing through the fields. “We don’t really go to London,” Shrishma shrugs. “It’s too far away.”

Stuart Hooper, the director of intelligence for Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, fears that London is actually far too near.

“It is a new phenomenon – the County Lines,” he explains. “Kent and Essex have very good transport to London and so the London drug gangs have the opportunity to widen their market.”

Folkestone and Dover are among the southern towns being targeted by up to 180 drug gangs. Criminals in the capital, realising that the Metropolitan Police recognise their faces, have begun to recruit young people as drug mules travelling out to the countryside.

“We need to acknowledge that there are vulnerable young people being exploited,” Hooper explains. His team is working with the Met, as well as local addiction services, to monitor violence.

And yet coastal crime is not a new phenomenon. “Gangs and turf wars have been around since at least the 1960s with the mods and rockers, and going back before then,” Hooper says. In the 1930s, crime beside the sea was so prevalent that Graham Greene based his novel Brighton Rock (1938) on gang wars. Meanwhile the queen of crime, Agatha Christie, took a suite at Folkestone’s Grand Hotel to pen her thriller Murder on the Orient Express (1934), and returned to Folkestone regularly.

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s Grand Hotel, where Agatha Christie wrote Murder On The Orient Express

Another type of violence can already be found in the seaside streets. In August, Kent Police was forced to intervene in a clash between the English Defence League and local protest group Folkestone United. The scenes could have taken place a century ago, when an influx of Belgian World War One refugees and British empire soldiers turned Folkestone into one of the most diverse cities in the world. Then as now, a wave of anti-immigration rhetoric followed.

The surge in support for UKIP has been driven by seaside towns such as Grimsby in Lincolnshire and Clacton in Essex. As the starting point for the channel tunnel, Folkestone has been central to the debate around immigration. In 2013 UKIP Leader Nigel Farage declared that he might stand as an MP in Folkestone (he later switched to the seaside region of Thanet).

“The Channel Tunnel drew everything away from here, from town, but it is coming back,” explains the waiter in Googies Art Cafe, a trendy burger and craft beer joint in Folkestone’s art district. “Folkestone has completely changed. For one thing, it has become a lot more multicultural. It used to be white, white, white. Eventually the town will be as trendy as Brighton.”

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s Creative Quarter

Trendiness, it seems, can transform troubled seaside towns into European hotspots. Richard Prothero points to the colossal variation between different seaside towns, sometimes near to each other. Whereas the statistics show Blackpool to be highly deprived, neighbouring Lytham St Annes is thriving. The Lancashire town has a renowned links golf course to draw in tourists.

Elsewhere, Salcombe in Devon has performed better than other seaside towns nearby. The upmarket clothes brand Jack Wills was founded in Salcombe, helping the town earn its nickname of Chelsea-on-Sea.

In Sussex, Hove has borrowed the street cred of neighbouring Brighton, welcoming sister campuses for the university. Thousands of visitors are filling the hotels and restaurants of Bournemouth, this season promoted to the Premier League for the first time.

Margate has capitalised on its connection to Tracey Emin, with the Turner Contemporary art gallery and an installation from artist Grayson Perry. In Weston-Super-Mare, tourism experts expect Banksy’s Dismaland to add 7m to the local economy.

Image copyright PA

Image caption Folkestone’s own Banksy mural, entitled “Art Buff”

Folkestone has benefitted from some good fortune. The flotation of local business Saga – an insurance and travel company aimed at the over 50s – prompted owner Roger De Haan to pour huge sums of money into regeneration. The result was the Creative Foundation.

“In 2002, the area around the seafront was the most run-down part of town,” says Alastair Upton, chief executive of the Creative Foundation. “Roger De Haan bought buildings in the whole area and restored them. Many of the buildings had taken a battering from the environment. The river runs below us and basements still flood periodically. But 90 of these buildings are now available for artistic activity.”

The Creative Foundation has launched a triennial art show, a new music and performance venue, a book fair, a public art collection featuring works by Tracey Emin, Mark Wallinger and Richard Wentworth, and has created 300 jobs. More importantly, it has given the town a reputation as an arts hub.

Beth Gibbs manages the Lilford Gallery Folkestone, which opened over the summer, and is found on a winding cobbled street newly crowded with art shops and cafes. Until recently the street had been dilapidated. “We are based in Canterbury,” Gibbs explains, “and were looking to expand when I heard about the Old High Street. There is a buzz about this area in the art world.”

Image caption The Old High Street, Folkestone

“Our main market is people coming down from London,” Gibbs says, “and a growing number coming over from France. Without the Old High Street, Folkestone would be just a bog-standard English seaside town.”

The impact of an arts revival is hard to assess.

In the 12 years since the regeneration began there has been very little research linking the town’s economic state or the number of tourists with the new arts scene. The town’s economic health has mirrored the country at large. Vast sums have been spent on the regeneration and yet the ONS still rates Folkestone as “deprived”. But Upton insists that Folkestone’s new arts scene has had a broader impact than that.

“You would be measuring the wrong thing if you measured visitor numbers. Success is a funny thing. There are some measurables – how does the town feel? What are the employment possibilities like? Are jobs secure and well paid?

“But there are also questions of the identity of a town. I think we have done a huge amount on this – changing the way people perceive Folkestone. There is a growing sense of self-confidence and pride for the town.”

At Googies, the staff has noticed the impact of Folkestone’s new reputation. “We are part of the Folkestone creative scene too – we all promote each other. In the past 10 years Folkestone has completely changed. People will soon start to realise that. We have sun, sand and sea. We have a better life.”

Image copyright iStock

Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine’s email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/17/how-do-you-rescue-a-seaside-town-bbc-news/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/167602583467

[allofbeercom]

How do you rescue a seaside town? – BBC News

Image copyright ALAMY

Having been a model of gentility, Folkestone went into a slump. But its efforts to combat its problems and rebuild might be a model for others, writes Hannah Sander.

The seaside town of Folkestone was once the height of fashion.

International superstars Agatha Christie and Yehudi Menuhin were regular visitors. King Edward VII spent so much of his time in the Kent town that locals took to peering in the windows of the Grand Hotel, in order to spot him having illicit tea with his Folkestone mistress Alice Keppel (the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall).

Today, a strip of grand mansions along Folkestone’s seafront is boarded up. Stretches of sunny beach have become an overnight stop for parked lorries. A closed nightclub completes the scene.

Welcome to the British seaside. All along the coast, seaside towns are in trouble. In the south, authorities battle against the spread of London drug gangs, the tensions fuelled by a European migrant crisis, and a seaside school system which Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, has warned is failing children.

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s funicular railway in its Victorian prime

And yet only a few minutes’ walk along Folkestone beach, pop-up restaurants offer grilled sea bass, oysters and champagne to the tourists. In the past decade the town’s new art scene has attracted an affluent following.

Similar transformations are occurring in Margate and Weston-Super-Mare. So are fading seaside towns becoming trendy again?

The British seaside has not recovered from the collapse of the maritime and tourism industries. Populations in coastal towns tend to be older and less ethnically diverse. Coastal towns have higher rates of unemployment and more long-term health problems.

Richard Prothero, from the Office for National Statistics, has analysed 274 seaside destinations around England and Wales. “Not every coastal town is struggling,” he explains. “Some are doing very well and remain popular.” Nevertheless, his study revealed high levels of deprivation in many seaside resorts.

In Folkestone, ONS statistics reveal that education is a particular concern. “The biggest impact on school performance is parental engagement,” says Dr Tanya Ovenden-Hope, visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth. She has been monitoring six struggling academies around England.

“In coastal areas we are finding that parents have perhaps received poor education themselves, or education that didn’t lead to a good job. So school is not a priority for them. That makes it much harder to engage the children.”

Folkestone

Population: 46,698 (2011 census)

UK constituency: Folkestone and Hythe; MP – Damian Collins (Conservative)

Twinned with Boulogne-sur-Mer and Etaples-sur-Mer in France, and Middelburg in the Netherlands

Ovenden-Hope herself went to school in Folkestone. She worries about the impact of the town’s two grammar schools.

On the pavement of Folkestone’s shopping district, three local schoolgirls wave colourful signs. They have just completed a sponsored silence, and are now handing out free hot meals to Folkestone’s homeless population. “Schools in Folkestone have got a lot better,” says sixth-former Shrishma Adhikari. “But there seem to be a lot more homeless people now.” All three pupils believe unemployment is a growing problem.

In reality, coastal schools have the opposite problem – too many jobs, not enough staff. “Recruitment is a key issue,” Ovenden-Hope explains. “If you are a newly qualified teacher in your 20s, would you want to go to a very remote coastal school that will present you with huge challenges but with a limited social life? Equally, if you are a middle-aged teacher and a job comes up in a coastal school, you might discover there is no employment in the area for your spouse.”

The three pupils volunteering in Folkestone’s streets agree that the town can feel far-flung, despite High-Speed 1 trains racing through the fields. “We don’t really go to London,” Shrishma shrugs. “It’s too far away.”

Stuart Hooper, the director of intelligence for Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, fears that London is actually far too near.

“It is a new phenomenon – the County Lines,” he explains. “Kent and Essex have very good transport to London and so the London drug gangs have the opportunity to widen their market.”

Folkestone and Dover are among the southern towns being targeted by up to 180 drug gangs. Criminals in the capital, realising that the Metropolitan Police recognise their faces, have begun to recruit young people as drug mules travelling out to the countryside.

“We need to acknowledge that there are vulnerable young people being exploited,” Hooper explains. His team is working with the Met, as well as local addiction services, to monitor violence.

And yet coastal crime is not a new phenomenon. “Gangs and turf wars have been around since at least the 1960s with the mods and rockers, and going back before then,” Hooper says. In the 1930s, crime beside the sea was so prevalent that Graham Greene based his novel Brighton Rock (1938) on gang wars. Meanwhile the queen of crime, Agatha Christie, took a suite at Folkestone’s Grand Hotel to pen her thriller Murder on the Orient Express (1934), and returned to Folkestone regularly.

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s Grand Hotel, where Agatha Christie wrote Murder On The Orient Express

Another type of violence can already be found in the seaside streets. In August, Kent Police was forced to intervene in a clash between the English Defence League and local protest group Folkestone United. The scenes could have taken place a century ago, when an influx of Belgian World War One refugees and British empire soldiers turned Folkestone into one of the most diverse cities in the world. Then as now, a wave of anti-immigration rhetoric followed.

The surge in support for UKIP has been driven by seaside towns such as Grimsby in Lincolnshire and Clacton in Essex. As the starting point for the channel tunnel, Folkestone has been central to the debate around immigration. In 2013 UKIP Leader Nigel Farage declared that he might stand as an MP in Folkestone (he later switched to the seaside region of Thanet).

“The Channel Tunnel drew everything away from here, from town, but it is coming back,” explains the waiter in Googies Art Cafe, a trendy burger and craft beer joint in Folkestone’s art district. “Folkestone has completely changed. For one thing, it has become a lot more multicultural. It used to be white, white, white. Eventually the town will be as trendy as Brighton.”

Image copyright ALAMY

Image caption Folkestone’s Creative Quarter

Trendiness, it seems, can transform troubled seaside towns into European hotspots. Richard Prothero points to the colossal variation between different seaside towns, sometimes near to each other. Whereas the statistics show Blackpool to be highly deprived, neighbouring Lytham St Annes is thriving. The Lancashire town has a renowned links golf course to draw in tourists.

Elsewhere, Salcombe in Devon has performed better than other seaside towns nearby. The upmarket clothes brand Jack Wills was founded in Salcombe, helping the town earn its nickname of Chelsea-on-Sea.

In Sussex, Hove has borrowed the street cred of neighbouring Brighton, welcoming sister campuses for the university. Thousands of visitors are filling the hotels and restaurants of Bournemouth, this season promoted to the Premier League for the first time.

Margate has capitalised on its connection to Tracey Emin, with the Turner Contemporary art gallery and an installation from artist Grayson Perry. In Weston-Super-Mare, tourism experts expect Banksy’s Dismaland to add 7m to the local economy.

Image copyright PA

Image caption Folkestone’s own Banksy mural, entitled “Art Buff”

Folkestone has benefitted from some good fortune. The flotation of local business Saga – an insurance and travel company aimed at the over 50s – prompted owner Roger De Haan to pour huge sums of money into regeneration. The result was the Creative Foundation.

“In 2002, the area around the seafront was the most run-down part of town,” says Alastair Upton, chief executive of the Creative Foundation. “Roger De Haan bought buildings in the whole area and restored them. Many of the buildings had taken a battering from the environment. The river runs below us and basements still flood periodically. But 90 of these buildings are now available for artistic activity.”

The Creative Foundation has launched a triennial art show, a new music and performance venue, a book fair, a public art collection featuring works by Tracey Emin, Mark Wallinger and Richard Wentworth, and has created 300 jobs. More importantly, it has given the town a reputation as an arts hub.

Beth Gibbs manages the Lilford Gallery Folkestone, which opened over the summer, and is found on a winding cobbled street newly crowded with art shops and cafes. Until recently the street had been dilapidated. “We are based in Canterbury,” Gibbs explains, “and were looking to expand when I heard about the Old High Street. There is a buzz about this area in the art world.”

Image caption The Old High Street, Folkestone

“Our main market is people coming down from London,” Gibbs says, “and a growing number coming over from France. Without the Old High Street, Folkestone would be just a bog-standard English seaside town.”

The impact of an arts revival is hard to assess.

In the 12 years since the regeneration began there has been very little research linking the town’s economic state or the number of tourists with the new arts scene. The town’s economic health has mirrored the country at large. Vast sums have been spent on the regeneration and yet the ONS still rates Folkestone as “deprived”. But Upton insists that Folkestone’s new arts scene has had a broader impact than that.

“You would be measuring the wrong thing if you measured visitor numbers. Success is a funny thing. There are some measurables – how does the town feel? What are the employment possibilities like? Are jobs secure and well paid?

“But there are also questions of the identity of a town. I think we have done a huge amount on this – changing the way people perceive Folkestone. There is a growing sense of self-confidence and pride for the town.”

At Googies, the staff has noticed the impact of Folkestone’s new reputation. “We are part of the Folkestone creative scene too – we all promote each other. In the past 10 years Folkestone has completely changed. People will soon start to realise that. We have sun, sand and sea. We have a better life.”

Image copyright iStock

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/17/how-do-you-rescue-a-seaside-town-bbc-news/

[avondurenvanroos]

#20 Degene die mijn ouders nooit mogen lezen.

Pap, mam, jullie zijn gewaarschuwd. Dit is iets om over tien jaar, zittend bij een kampvuur met een glas wijn en kinderen in slaapzakken, te vertellen met een zenuwachtige glimlach. Weet dat ik het moment voelde, ik zag mijn keuzes en ik liet me meenemen.

Soms moet je dat doen.

Het was een ervaring.

Jack appte me op een luie zaterdag, een paar dagen na mijn vakantie. Ik was er achter gekomen dat ik twee weken niet hoefde te werken, dat mijn planning niet goed was geweest en besloot te doen waar ik zin in had: in bed liggen, wiet roken en films kijken.

Roos, ik verveel me. Ik moet uit huis, ik wil iets doen.

Dus beloofde ik hem een avontuur, hij beloofde wijn te halen. Ik lakte mijn nagels, trok een strakke broek aan, deed een poging iets van mijn haar te maken en maakte een nodige omweg naar de coffeeshop. De derde dag in een rij dat ik er kwam. Het personeel kende me ondertussen net te goed. De portier is mijn collega, hij werkt op meerdere plekken. De jongen achter de kassa glimlacht me vaak al tegemoet. Mijn schaamte zet zich soms om in zenuwachtige vrolijkheid, waardoor ik meestal wel in een lacherig praatje beland. Even dacht ik met spijt aan mijn bankrekening. Even.

Op de fiets voelden mijn benen zwaar en mijn rug krom en nam ik me voor om misschien toch minder in bed te liggen. Ik had het niet kunnen helpen, ik was ongesteld. De krampen in mijn onderbuik lieten me series bingewatchen en me volproppen met slecht eten. Stug fietste ik tegen de wind in.

Door de koptelefoon die ik van Jack had gekregen hoorde ik tenminste mijn eigen gehijg niet.

Misschien moest ik ook minder gaan roken.

Toen ik uiteindelijk bezweet Jack’s appartement in strompelde en zijn kitten lastig kon vallen, werd ik begroet met welkome woorden: ‘Waar is de wiet, dan draai ik vast een joint. Neem je tijd maar even met de kat.’

Met het beestje in mijn armen wees ik hem naar mijn tas en gaf ik hem een knuffel. ‘Ik heb jullie gemist,’ zei ik. Jack lachte. ‘Wij jou ook, hoe was je vakantie? Lekker uitgewaaid?’ We gingen aan tafel zitten, ik plofte neer op mijn stoel. ‘Het was heerlijk, zwemmen, overal water, zoveel rust. Ik wil terug.’ Ik liet mijn hoofd hangen en pruil. Ik voelde de druilerige sluier die over mijn hele lijf  leek te hangen verdwijnen. Het was alsof ik weer een beetje beter kon ademhalen.

We dronken wijn, rookten wiet op Jack’s balkon en speelden Rummicub. Ik was blij dat het weer kon zo. We waren meer dan eerst, beter. We begrepen elkaar beter, konden beter over onze gevoelens praten. We waren niet gemaakt voor elkaar, niet op die manier. Onze relatie kon zo niet zijn. Nu konden we openlijk delen, zonder verwachtingen. Het voelde vrij.

En tot daar aan toe was het een vrij acceptabele avond, eentje die ik vaker had meegemaakt. Wat daarna kwam was buiten de grenzen die ik had gesteld voor mezelf, buiten de grenzen die ik had beloofd aan mijn ouders dat ik die niet wilde overtreden. Ik was altijd open geweest over mijn drugsgebruik tegenover ze, had de eerste keer xtc verzwegen maar alle andere keren eerlijk verteld wat ik had gebruikt en hoe het was geweest. We konden er normaal over praten. Mijn vader blowt, heeft in zijn jeugd ook de nodige experimenten gedaan en avonturen beleefd. Een ding had ik ze wel altijd verzekerd. Dat ik geen shit door mijn neus wilde jagen en dat ik niks wilde gebruiken waardoor ik echt mijn grip op de realiteit zou verliezen. Snuiven vond ik geen aantrekkelijk concept. Wat het dan ook mocht zijn. Cocaine, ketamine, leek me allemaal maar niets en ik was er altijd van overtuigd geweest dat ik het niet wilde gebruiken. Ik kan nog even door gaan over beloftes die ik aan mezelf heb gemaakt etc, maar niemand zit daar op te wachten.

‘Wil je ook een beetje?’ Vroeg Chris, een van de jongens die Jack had uitgenodigd. Ik had wantrouwig de handelingen van de coke snuivende vrienden om me heen gadegeslagen. Jack stootte me aan. Met grote ogen keek ik terug. Ik wilde het stiekem wel. Ik denk dat hij dat kon zien. ‘Dan weet je wel hoe het is,’ zei hij, zijn schouders ophalend. ‘Weet je het zeker? Kan ik dit aan?’ Ik vroeg het hem met een speelse angst maar hij wist ook wel dat die niet helemaal geveinsd was. ‘Je moet het zelf willen, Roos. Je wordt weer even helderder, minder dronken, je krijgt wat meer energie.’ Jack liep demonstratief naar de tafel en snoof zijn lijntje. Hij tikte Chris aan na een laatste blik op mij. Ik knikte. ‘Leg maar een kleintje neer, voor haar.’ Chris stak zijn duim naar me op en glimlachte en ik dacht, weet je. Waarom niet? Ik voelde mijn zware benen, de buikpijn van mijn tegenstribbelende baarmoeder, de vermoeidheid en de drank en ik dacht, waarom fucking niet?

Geen idee of ik er iets van heb gevoeld. Ik vergat alle middelen die ik tot me had genomen en liet me maar gewoon meeslepen. Ik volgde ze naar Stratum, de koele wind gaf me weer energie en wilde me laten dansen. Terwijl we over straat liepen checkte ik mijn telefoon. Een appje van Wolf. Al snel kwam ik er achter dat hij nog geen 100 meter van me verwijderd was. Het toeval deed me lachen, maar ik wist niet of ik die twee werelden elkaar wilde laten ontmoeten en besloot af te wachten wat hij wilde.

In de Altstad hingen we onze jassen op, dronken we bier en dansten we zonder schaamte. Wolf bleef me berichtjes sturen, wilde me zien. Hij moest werken de volgende dag, maar wilde wel bij me slapen. Seks was geen optie, ik was ongesteld. Natuurlijk ben ik creatief, maar ik was net daar, waar de muziek en het leven was. Net weer buiten, net weer iets aan het doen. Wolf wilde ik ook wel doen, maar… Ik trok Jack aan zijn mauw. ‘Wolf wil bij me slapen,’ zei ik, niet wetend wat ik daar van vond. Ik zat in het moment, ik wilde dansen en met mijn vrienden chillen. Hij gebaarde met zijn hoofd. ‘Gaan,’ zei hij. ‘Maar jouw fiets staat vast aan die van mij,’ zei ik,’ en hij komt hier heen, maar ik ik heb al gezegd dat ik het niet zo goed weet.’ ‘Dus hij komt even “hoi” zeggen?’ ‘Ik denk het,’

En even later stond hij achter me. Wolf. Met zijn leuke glimlach en het ritme in zijn stem en in zijn doen en laten. Ik was opeens zoveel dronkener dan ik dacht. Onhandig en zonder me een houding te weten te geven stonden we even, een paar minuten, tegen over elkaar. Jack stelde zich voor. En ik werd weer herinnerd aan het feit dat Wolf alles over hem had gelezen. Dat hij wist wat we hadden gedaan, wat ik voor Jack heb gevoeld. We hadden er nog over gepraat. En Jack wist wat ik met Wolf heb gedaan en hoe ik me over hem voelde en ineens stond ik met twee jonge mannen tegenover me die beiden wisten hoe ik eruit zag zonder kleren. Het waren rare gedachten om te hebben en weer vroeg ik me af hoe ik op dat punt in mijn leven was gekomen, mijn avontuurtje in Middelburg meegerekend. Hoe ik met al mijn angsten en rare issues toch daar stond. Mijn hoofd was op hol geslagen.

En toen was Wolf ook zomaar weer weg. Niet zomaar, hij nam afscheid, ging slapen bij zijn zus, maar ik was er met mijn hoofd niet bij en het moment vervloog. Ik dacht nog aan hem, terwijl we dansten.

Hoewel ik het niet wilde en niet graag toegaf, had ik wat moeite met de hele situatie. Onze ontmoeting, hoe dat voelde, wat Wolf er over dacht, alles was verwarrend. De reden daarvoor lag vooral bij mezelf. Ik verlangde naar meer, als een trieste, hopeloze romanticus die te veel boeken heeft gelezen. Ik wilde meer dan seks en chillen, ook al was het heerlijk en zou het makkelijk kunnen zijn. En wat wist ik ook echt niet precies. Misschien wilde ik ook wel te veel.

Jack haalde me uit mijn gedachtegang.

‘Niet te veel nadenken,’ zei hij en ik knikte. Hij had gelijk. Ik haalde diep adem. Dronk bier, vergat weer.

In het steegje naast Pepperminds zwalkten we de schaduwen in. Mijn metgezellen gingen keta snuiven. Keta snuiven. Iedere andere avond zou ik daar waarschijnlijk van weg zijn gebleven, maar die nacht voelde ik me nieuwsgierig en geprikkeld.

Weer pikte Jack het zonder moeite op. ‘Zal ik zo even aan Chris vragen of je ook een beetje mag?’ Hij glimlachte een beetje zelfgenoegzaam, ik wist wat er door hem heen ging. Dit was een soort gecontroleerde corruptie, hij zag ook wel in dat dit stappen buiten mijn grenzen waren. Buiten mijn principes. Jack snoof zijn puntje van iemands huissleutel. Even zaten we in stilte op het muurtje langs het water. Er liepen mensen voorbij, even maakte ik me zorgen over wat ze zagen. Ik keek naar Jack, die leek nergens acht op te slaan. Hij zuchtte even, zijn ogen groot en glanzend. ‘Vind je het erg om even te wachten?’ Hij lachte en zijn oogleden gingen weer hangen. ‘Wachten met snuiven?’ Ik kon het niet laten om te grijnzen. Het was een beetje absurd voor me. ‘Ja, totdat ik weet hoe dit valt. Volgens mij was het redelijk veel.’ Ik klopte hem op zijn schouder. ‘Tuurlijk, kiddo. Komt goed.’  

Een paar minuten later tikte Jack me aan. ‘Ik voel me prima, ga je gang,’ Hij hield toezicht op de hoeveelheid die Chris op de sleutel schepte. Ze discussieerden over wat het beste was. Het was alsof Jack me bij de hand meenam in het proces, iets wat hij altijd deed als we samen drugs deden. Mede doordat ik een afhankelijke zenuwpees kan zijn houdt hij altijd lichtelijk toezicht op me. Zien jullie, Pap en Mam, ik had begeleiding. It’s all okay.

Dus ik snoof mijn beetje ket, de keren dat ik mezelf had beloofd dat nooit te doen in mijn achterhoofd, en we gingen verder. Mijn rechter neusgat brandde, ik had een vieze smaak in mijn mond en wilde iets drinken, maar was tevreden. . Ik was tevreden met Jack die naast me liep, zijn excentrieke vrienden die aardig tegen me waren en nu rond fladderden en onzin uitkraamden, ik was tevreden met alle dronken mensen om ons heen. Ik was tevreden met hoe mijn voeten vast op de grond voelden en hoe mijn leven er uit zag op dat moment. Ook al wankelde ik, struikelde ik af en toe bijna omdat ik afgeleid werd door alles wat ik zag voelde ik me heel geaard. De balkons boven ons, al die huizen en appartementen en mensen, de planten die over de randen regenden. Mijn gedachten waren heerlijk verstrooid maar ik had even het idee dat ik daadwerkelijk deel uit maakte van het geheel.

We fietsten naar Woensel, waar een van de jongens met vrienden in een huis woonde. Languit op de banken liggend rookten we jointjes. We namen nog een lijntje, keken videoclips met het volume laag. Ik zag de vormen in elkaar over lopen en kon niet weten of het kwam door de drugs of door de vermoeidheid.

De gesprekken gingen nergens meer over, we vielen langzaam allemaal in slaap. We waren tot het einde door gegaan.

En het maakte niets uit.