Chatham is failing where Dundee succeeds
Plus free buses this weekend, The Ashen Keys album launch, our weekly events guide, and more
It’s not often that you’d compare Chatham and Dundee, but that’s exactly what a new report looking at the links between higher education and the creative economy in each place has done. It contains a number of fascinating insights that suggest Chatham might be trying to keep up. We’ve been getting into the details. Further down, we have news of free buses this weekend, a review of the Ashen Keys album launch, our weekly events guide, and more.
Chatham is failing where Dundee succeeds
A new report examining the connection between higher education and the creative industries has found that Chatham is failing to capitalise on the opportunities the two sectors can offer.
The snappily titled report, ‘The challenges of developing sustainable cultural and creative ecosystems and the role of higher education institutions: Lessons from Dundee and Chatham, UK,’ compares Chatham and Dundee because of their history as former industrial areas that have attempted to regenerate using education and the creative industries.
While the report shows that both areas still have stark sociological and economic divides, it argues that Dundee has developed a creative economy more successfully than Chatham. With the focus on higher education, it is noted that while both areas have brought students, Dundee has managed to incubate graduates within the creative industries, meaning that more of them have stayed in the city rather than leaving once their studies are over.
This success has been down to a number of initiatives, including creative coworking spaces, higher education staff that actively engage students with the local community, incubators to build creative businesses, and a well-developed, culture-led approach to regeneration by the local council. This approach has seen remarkable success with the development of a Cultural Quarter and the opening of a V&A Museum in the city.
Conversely, while the report grants that Chatham has seen efforts to develop a creative economy, these have been hampered by a lack of investment in connecting resources and fostering a wider creative ecosystem. Specifically, the report highlights the centrality of Chatham Historic Dockyard within the higher education sector, which, despite providing room for creativity and education, is largely disconnected from the rest of the surrounding towns.
This is set out starkly by one contributor to the report who teaches within the University of Kent at Chatham Dockyard, who explains why their music teaching is being relocated to Canterbury:
“We actually teach in the Dockyard itself, and that’s a World Heritage Site. It is full of history... From a teaching perspective it’s not connected with the rest of the world. Chatham and in fact, Medway is struggling... So we are moving it to Canterbury because there is more of a music scene, more of a cultural hub or perceived cultural hub, slightly better facilities in terms of a concert hall and a theatre that belongs to the university.” – Creative higher education provider, Chatham
A lack of performance venues and affordable spaces is highlighted as a problem for those learning and graduating in Chatham. The universities here are bringing in creative talent, but as this cannot be nurtured, most graduates end up leaving and taking their newly developed skills elsewhere.
The same higher education provider is even more blunt about the consequences of this, highlighting that there are no opportunities for musicians to make a living or even perform. This is deemed as a problem so severe that it impacts academic ability too:
“There’s no live performance in Chatham. There’s no opportunity for musicians in Chatham to make a living, let alone the students to even perform. So they’re all sitting at home or they’re sitting in, um, accommodation, university accommodation and they’re trying to find things to do. And it’s not comfortable. It’s not good for them. It’s not good for their mental health. And they’re not performing even academically as well” – Creative higher education provider, Chatham.
Another educator in Chatham raises the issue of the disconnection between what they are attempting to do with their educational courses and the lack of surrounding support, particularly given the isolated nature of the Dockyard:
“It’s very frustrating trying to sell a creative course in an area that has no creative focus. I mean you can turn up to the campus but the campus has no creative focus either, it’s a dockyard. It’s beautiful, but apart from the studio nothing happens” – Creative higher education provider, Chatham.
That isn’t to say the report is all doom and gloom for Chatham. It does manage to find some potential positives for the future of the creative economy in Chatham. It highlights the creation of a dedicated Head of Culture role at Medway Council, a stronger development of a cultural strategy, and the potential from new projects like The Docking Station, which is set to open in Chatham Dockyard in 2026, providing combined education and creative industry facilities for digital production.
That said, it cautions that Chatham needs more than investment in large projects around Chatham Dockyard. It should focus on a more long-term sustainable creative scene for our towns.
The main report contains a number of lessons that could perhaps be learnt from Dundee, so there may in fact still be time for Chatham to develop a creative economy.
Whether or not we actually manage to get our act together and do it is another matter entirely.
Get the bus for free this weekend
This weekend is Free Bus Weekend in Medway, meaning you can get on the bus for free. The offer is being run as part of ‘Catch the Bus Month’, proving there is an event for just about anything these days.
The scheme, funded by the government as part of Medway’s Bus Service Improvement Plan, will see all bus journeys starting in Medway before 8pm on Saturday and Sunday be free. The starting in Medway part is important as if you get the bus to Bluewater or Maidstone or anywhere outside of Medway, while the outbound journey will be free, you’ll have to pay on the way back. Arriva, ASD, Chalkwell, Nu-Venture, and Redroute are all participating.
Of course, depending on where you live in Medway, taking up the offer might prove challenging given how rare buses are, particularly on the weekends. But if you are heading into town and have one of the fairly reliable bus services in Medway, you’ll be able to do so for free.
Review: The Ashen Keys album launch at the Medway Little Theatre
by Stephen Morris
The Medway Little Theatre has hosted some rather special performances over the last twelve months. Think Billy Childish and The Singing Loins back in November 2023. Think Little Storping in the Swuff mixing anxiety and kooky comedy for an inspired performance in July. And now think The Ashen Keys, bringing songs of woodlands and womanhood to this rather wonderful venue.
The evening begins with support from Erika Olson, an American-born singer-songwriter who sings beautiful, exquisite songs brought from a vulnerable place.
There are songs about wanting to ‘give up/can the rain tell the storm ‘I surrender?’’ There are songs about getting lost in the busyness of life: ‘You don’t know where you want to be – chasing somebody else’s dreams’. But there are also songs with the simple message of ‘You got this’.
One of the most striking moments in Olson’s short set is utterly heartbreaking: the account of a woman with an eating disorder who is ‘starving to be seen/dying to be known/hungry little bird.’ It is devastating in its honesty and compassion.
The songs Erika Olson performs are born – and that word is very deliberately chosen – out of a place of maternal creativity. At one point, between one song and another, she explains how her life changed from being career-focused when she had her first child: “I thought to myself I created life! What else can I create?”
Utterly, utterly beautiful songs, that’s what.
Before the interval, The Ashen Keys – the headliners - take to the stage. But they are not here to sing songs or play music. Not yet.
The plan is, uncharacteristically, for the band to perform the whole of their new album, The Name on Your Compass, in its entirety and in order without any talking between songs. Instead, they are going to do all the talking now in the form of a Q&A.
It’s here that we discover, by way of an answer to a submitted question, that first album purchases and acquisitions for the band included the likes of Ant and Dec and Jason and Kylie.
And then, after a short intermission, it’s on with the show.
The set starts – as, of course, does the album – with the luxuriant rising sound of accordion, guitar and violin meandering and finally meeting to form the start of ‘Capricious’. It’s an exquisite start to the set, full of promise, mystery and intrigue.
The song itself takes a card game as a metaphor for a relationship with someone who is emotionally unavailable. It provides a hint of what is to come as the performance unwinds: lyrics which explore complicated lives – complicated relationships – and seek to find the way through to something better.
The first few songs from the set concern women: women who are misunderstood; women who are mistreated; women who fight and struggle on for the families in adversity.
And so ‘Ellerby Hoard’ imagines the thoughts and motives of a woman squirrelling away money to ensure she can provide for her family; ‘Cassandra’, with its gorgeously catchy riff, concerns itself with a woman of Greek myth forever disbelieved when she tells the truth; and ‘Miss Sargent’, a mini-symphony of a song featuring regular changes in rhythm, texture and volume, weighs up the benefits of ‘the life that we did choose’ versus the life in which someone can ‘fulfil your dreams’.
The songs which follow on from this take nature, rather than the feminine, as their theme. It’s here that The Ashen Keys explore the idea of resolution and healing.
Against a backdrop of birdsong field recordings (‘Migration’), with intricately intertwined clarinet and violins (the instrumental ‘Orchid’), and using rich, evocative lyrics (“I know where I need to go when my soul is jaded” on ‘Mother Tree’), the band take the audience at the Little Theatre on an expedition through flora and fauna, inviting us all to find nourishment in a simpler life where we each look after one another. It’s rather beautiful.
The finale of the performance begins with a song exploring the dangers of not allowing yourself to be nourished. There is a heartbreaking cruelty in the self-sabotage/self-protection found in the line “gather up your favourite things and set them all on fire” from ‘The Den’.
But this is rather triumphantly dispelled by ‘Gathering’ and ‘Albion’, two songs which, by rights, should appear on any folk festival setlist coinciding with a setting sun. The former is a sumptuous embrace of all the nourishment and goodness celebrated in earlier songs – and then some.
The latter is a rousing, post-Empire alternative to ‘Rule Britannia,’ in which the country of Albion is reminded that courage, hope, and responsibility to others are just as important as any sense of pride and glory.
There is an entirely deserved rapturous applause at the end. There have, in truth, been rapturous applauses throughout the evening. But by the time we reach the end of the setlist, there is a sense that something very beautiful has been completed – only a little too soon.
There is an encore, of course. There has to be an encore. And with no songs from the album left to perform, there is only one logical course of action: a cover of Dua Lipa’s ‘New Rules’.
Their take on the pop song is a phenomenal, rip-roaring, fast-paced interpretation: autotune and synths are replaced by accordion, guitar, and violin and The Ashen Keys’ distinctive three-part harmony, which proves utterly spellbinding.
There is an instant reaction of delight in the audience. And why wouldn’t there be?
It’s a rather special end to a very special night.
The Name on Your Compass is available now on Bandcamp. Find out more about Erika Olson on her website.
Events this week
🎸 Frau Pouch, one of Medway’s best bands, are calling it a day, and their farewell show is tonight (Fri 20 Sep) at Poco Loco in Chatham. Support from Punching Swans, Faux Taux, and Snidefinder. Tickets £5.
🎸 Kicking Against Nothing are back with one of their alternative gig nights at The Oast in Rainham tomorrow night (Fri 20 Sep). The lineup features The Vouchers, Mitchell Lane, and Dockyard alongside a mini-market of Kent visual artists. Tickets £5.
✏️ A new exhibition of work by Ralph Steadman opens at Chatham Dockyard on Saturday (21 Sep) and runs until November. Steadman has illustrated some of the most recognisable British novels, collaborated with Hunter S Thompson, and produced an intimidating amount of his own work, all of which will be featured. Tickets £28.50 (includes Dockyard entry).
📽️ Odeon in Chatham have another mystery horror film screening on Monday (23 Sep), which will be a pre-release film. Smart people on the internet seem to think it’s Never Let Go but don’t blame us if they’re wrong. Tickets £7.
⚓ Ghost Ships is the next big immersive theatre production from the Chatham-based Icon Theatre, which opens at Chatham Dockyard on Wednesday (25 Sep) and runs until 28 Sep. It recharts the history of Chatham Dockyard, examining people and the place and the impact of the Dockyard from its earliest days until now. Tickets £15.
🎤 Big Trouble open mic poetry night is back on Thursday (26 Sep) at the 12 Degrees micropub in Rochester. Feature performances from Kent poets Barnaby Harsent and Alby Stockley, and the regular free-for-all performances. Tickets £7.
Footnotes
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Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Searching For A Stream by Garden Centre, Wearing Out The Refrain by Bad Moves, and All Hell by Los Campesinos!
The old story of Medway failing to provide performance venues and opportunities... alongside a review of The Ashen Keys taking the DIY Medway approach. As a committee member of Medway Music 2000 (MM2K) about 20 years, a report by Mark Brown (I think) outlined the lack of performance and rehearsal spaces in the Towns, which back then had a similar population to Brighton. MM2K were pushing for a venue to be built near to Chatham Library; there were plans of what it ideally would look like. I wonder what became of that report.
Just got in from the Frau Pouch gig. They are one of my favourites of my generation of Medway bands, and I’m gutted I’ve now seen them for the final time.