Folkestone Triennial: The Hard Questions Behind Creative Folkestone’s Impact Report

Back in 2007, as Folkestone’s culture-led reinvention was being set out, Sir Roger De Haan gave a revealing account of himself. In video footage from that period, he describes himself as “disgusting”, says he does not have to do any of the work, and acknowledges that he “shouts” and “screams” a lot and “demand” everything happen quicker than people can make it happen. Nearly two decades later, the institution built out of that drive is still here. The question is whether its latest impact report tells the whole story.

Trevor Minter OBE once put it even more bluntly, describing Sir Roger De Haan as a man who does not understand “No” or “Can’t”. Whatever anyone makes of the man personally, the public record points in one direction. This was never a modest, tentative project. It was a force-of-will project. A town, a vision, a patron with money, clout and impatience, and an insistence that things would move.

And move they did.

Creative Folkestone’s 2025 Triennial report makes clear that there have now been six Folkestone Triennials. The first was in 2008, followed by editions in 2011, 2014, 2017, 2021 and 2025. The report describes the 2025 show as “the sixth edition” and says the next, in 2028, will be the seventh. So whatever began in 2007 as a cultural-regeneration pitch did not merely happen once. It stuck. It became part of the town’s calendar and part of its self-image.

That matters. Plenty of grand civic visions are launched with a fanfare and end up as half-finished brochures and fading memories. The Folkestone Triennial did not. It endured. The new report says the 2025 edition, How Lies the Land?, ran from 19 July to 19 October, brought together 18 artists and 18 artworks, and attracted an estimated 270,000 visitors. It says the event generated more than £13 million of economic activity, supported or created the equivalent of 163 full-time jobs, and engaged 25,000 people through free events and activities, including 11,980 schoolchildren.

On one level, that is plainly impressive. The report is not empty. It contains real substance. It names the artists. It identifies venues. It records a serious education and engagement programme. It points to reopened heritage spaces, local collaborations, accessibility work, and the likely addition of several new works to the permanent Folkestone Artworks collection. There is a real event behind the polished presentation.

But that is only half the job. The other half is scrutiny. And this report is much less comfortable there.

The first problem is tone. This is written far more like an impact brochure than a hard-edged public evaluation. The language is relentlessly upbeat. The Triennial “once again transformed the town”. The event ran over “92 glorious days”. It was “transformative”. The press quotes are all praise. The visitor feedback is all sunshine. That is perfectly understandable from the organisation that staged it. It is not the same thing as a rounded public account.

The second problem is methodology. The report gives readers big headline numbers, but not enough of the workings underneath them. Take the claimed 270,000 visitors. What exactly is being counted here? Unique people? Repeat visits? Estimated footfall? Modelled attendance? The report does not really say. The same is true of the claim that the Triennial generated nearly £13 million in economic activity. We are told this was calculated by Destination Research using a computer model drawing on national tourism surveys and Creative Folkestone’s own research. That is something, but it is not enough detail for a sceptical reader to interrogate the claim properly.

Then there is the jobs figure. The report says “hundreds of local jobs were created or sustained”, equivalent to 163 full-time positions. Again, that sounds strong until you ask the obvious follow-up: how? How many were temporary? How many were part-time? How many were induced by visitor spending rather than directly employed by the event? How was that full-time equivalent calculated? The report never really shows its homework.

The same slipperiness appears in the participation figures. The report says more than 25,000 people took part in free events, Fringe activities, or the development of artworks. It says 4,433 people took part in 137 public programme events, and 11,980 children and young people participated in 106 learning events and activities. It also says 9,840 pupils were reached through school assemblies and 1,045 schoolchildren took part in organised tours. Those are good numbers. But are they unique individuals or attendances? How much overlap is there between one bucket and another? The report does not make that clear.

Then comes the question the report most conspicuously avoids. What did all this cost?

Page 4 thanks the funders and supporters. The report names Arts Council England, the Roger De Haan Charitable Trust, Saga and others. It talks repeatedly about impact, value and legacy. Yet nowhere in the document is there a plain overall budget for the 2025 Triennial, no simple breakdown of who contributed what, no cost-per-visitor figure, and no straightforward return-on-investment explanation. If an organisation wants to trumpet £13 million in economic activity, the grown-up next step is to show the denominator.

The media section is even more eyebrow-raising. Early in the report, Creative Folkestone says more than 6 million people engaged with the Triennial through media and PR. Later, the marketing page claims 6.98 million estimated views, 7,770 engagements and, most strikingly of all, a “1 billion reach” — a figure so vast it amounts to roughly one in eight people on Earth.That last figure practically leaps off the page and demands explanation. One billion is a very large number for an art event in one Kent seaside town. It may be a marketing metric rather than an audience figure in any ordinary sense, but if so the report should say so plainly. As written, it looks like the sort of number that flatters a presentation slide while telling the public very little.

The demographic section is also telling in what it includes and what it leaves out. The survey data says 55% of respondents were from East Kent, 38% were first-time visitors, and 40% were returning for their fourth, fifth or sixth visit. It says 85% identified as White, 5% as Black or Asian, and 8% as mixed, multiple or other ethnic background. That does not even add up neatly to 100. More importantly, it says next to nothing about class, income or whether the event is reaching those residents most squeezed by the economics of modern Folkestone rather than mainly circulating among the culturally engaged.

And yet, for all that, the strongest parts of the report are genuinely strong.

The education programme looks serious. The reopening and reuse of heritage spaces is concrete rather than abstract. The access work appears thoughtful, including a large-font access map and partnerships with local disability and mental health organisations. The report also shows that the Triennial was not just decorative. The Ministry of Sewers project by Cooking Sections directly addressed water pollution and the “continued mismanagement of the water supply”, and the report says more than 400 people shared their stories while a petition for cleaner water and year-round sea-water testing reached 7,600 signatures by the end of the exhibition. That is not art as wallpaper. That is art picking a fight.

So the real story here is not that the Triennial is fake. It plainly is not. The real story is that a serious institution is still describing itself in a way that ducks serious scrutiny.

That takes us back to Sir Roger De Haan. If, in 2007, he was candid enough to describe himself as “disgusting”, to admit he did not have to do the work himself, and to say that he “shouts” and “screams” and “demands” things happen faster than people can make them happen, then perhaps that tells us something about Folkestone’s long cultural experiment. It was not built by consensus and caution. It was built by force, impatience, money, influence and relentless will.

 

That sort of drive can build institutions. Clearly, in Folkestone, it has.

But six Triennials in, the town deserves something more than glossy self-congratulation. It deserves the whole ledger. Not just the applause, but the arithmetic. Not just the adjectives, but the assumptions. Not just the beautiful photographs, but the awkward questions too.

Because by now the Folkestone Triennial is not some fragile start-up idea that needs protecting from criticism. It is a major civic and cultural fixture. And a fixture of this kind should be robust enough to face proper public scrutiny.

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent