National Saturday Club @ The Margate School of Art

Aim

To help fund the 2026-27 National Saturday Club at The Margate School of Art - a free art & design programme for local teens aged 13-16.

The National Saturday Club at The Margate School of Art ("mast") forms part of a nationwide creative programme aimed at 13-16 year olds. Mast is currently the only school in Thanet participating in the National Saturday Club.

It’s free to Club members and runs on Saturday mornings.

This year will be the school's fourth Saturday Club, running from January 2027 to July 2027. During term time, the Club meets each Saturday from 10am - 1pm on the second floor of mast. 

The creative art and design sessions are led by enthusiastic local artists with interdisciplinary practices. The sessions offer a wonderful opportunity for Club members to individually explore and collaborate in their art making. The Club builds their confidence, empowers them to discover their own artistic interests, and inspires them toward further avenues and possible future careers.

In order to make the Club free for members who may have limited access to arts education and creative opportunities, we aim to raise £10,000 for this school year's 7-month programme. 

This amount covers materials and administration costs; tutors and assistants to run the workshops; a local exhibition of Club members’ work; and an end-of-year trip to London for a graduation ceremony and exhibition at the prestigious Somerset House. 

Below are five reasons - from former Club members and their families - why you might choose to donate to our fundraising campaign for these young artists!

• “The Club has helped my creativity because it makes me feel happy and accomplished. I’m thinking of doing this as a full-time job one day in the future.”
• “It has opened my eyes to how multifaceted art is. It’s not just drawing and painting, but also the thought and preparation that goes into it.” 
• “My imagination has increasingly developed through making collages and thinking what would look and suit better while also taking in critique and acknowledging different people’s opinions.”   
• “Being on the autism spectrum, she has struggled with being around people, but this has not been the case with the Saturday Club, where she has made friends and met new people.” 
• “I've noticed she's a lot more confident, and it’s nice that she's actually getting out of the house on a weekend.”

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Last School Year

Our 2025-26 National Saturday Club ran from March to July 2026. Club members participated in a wide range of workshops delivered by local artists, including:

- Self Expression & Self Portraits w/ Leggy Gordon

- Shading & Printing with Plasticine w/ Leggy Gordon & Iso Attrill

- Claymation w/ Iso Attrill

- Mark-Making with Sounds w/ Grace Attlee

- Collage in 2D & 3D w/ Grace Attlee

- Papier-Mâche Sculpture & Set Building w/ Eve Jefferies

- Cyanotype Printing w/ Lina Ivanova & Lucas Gabellini-Fava

- Shadow Capture & Portal Making w/ Silvana Gordon-Valenzuela

- Spray Painting w/ Colton Kempf

- Curation w/ Polly Brannan

- Reflection Collages w/ Henry Maddicott

Click here to view more photos from these workshops! 

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Looking Ahead

For the 2026–27 school year, our goal is to extend our Saturday Club across the entire Winter & Spring Terms, allowing us to broaden our offerings and deepen engagement with Club members. We wish to facilitate even more collaboration between Club members and local artists who enjoy sharing their practices with young people on Saturday mornings.

Click here for the landing page of our 2026-27 Club.

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Claymation Videos

Below are the claymation videos that Club members made in March. They began by designing characters on paper, then constructed aluminium armatures and wrapped them in plasticine, before building small scenes to animate their characters within. Club members learned how to use a free app called Stop Motion to bring their characters to life on screen.

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Local Exhibition

Below are photos from July's exhibition of the Club members' own work, held at EKC Margate Digital on the High Street. Guided by Polly Brannan of OSE (Open School East), the young artists curated, designed, and installed the show themselves during one of their Saturday sessions.

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Trip to London

Below are photos from the Club members' trip to London for the National Saturday Club graduation and summer show at Somerset House on 12 July 2026. The teens had the chance to engage with work from other Saturday Clubs around the country, and proudly showed off their own collaborative sculpture to the families who came along to celebrate with them.

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Support from the National Saturday Club

Below is a letter from Lucy Kennedy, the Chief Executive of the Saturday Club Trust, detailing our collaboration with their organisation and the support that they give to us.

Dear Colton,

I am delighted to write in support of The Margate School of Arts’s funding application to secure the continuation of their Art&Design Saturday Club for 13-16 year olds in Margate. 

The National Saturday Club is an established network of further and higher education institutions, industry and cultural partners who work collaboratively to engage 13–16-year-olds from diverse backgrounds and underrepresented communities. The programme’s tried and tested creative educational framework, established in 2009, is designed to support the next generation, building skills, widening access, nurturing well-being and introducing pathways to further study and careers in a breadth of creative subjects.

Establishing an Art&Design Saturday Club has enabled The Margate School of Art to introduce young people to the breadth of the art and design sectors, imparting an array of valuable transferable skills that are greatly sought after by employers in the UK’s thriving creative sector and beyond. In recent programmes across the network, Art&Design Club members have explored more than 200 creative disciplines. The combination of imaginative thinking and technical skills that are at the heart of every Art&Design Club’s programme is the foundation for a diverse range of careers, including animation, architecture, photography, graphics and fine art.

The National Saturday Club are supporting The Margate School of Art in the delivery of the weekly Saturday programme. This includes provision of national events: London Visit, Masterclass, Summer Show and graduation ceremony. In addition, the Trust provides guidance on the set-up and running of the National Saturday Club through our Tutor’s Handbook, tutors programme and the Trust’s team of advisors. 

As part of our yearly programme, we also work with an independent evaluator to provide an evaluation report for each of partner institutions with detailed feedback on the national and local impact of their Saturday Club. The Trust’s annual review has consistently shown that the programme increases the young people’s enthusiasm and commitment to their subject and builds their resilience and confidence, contributing to their social development and personal growth.

Kind regards,

Lucy Kennedy

Chief Executive

Saturday Club Trust

www.saturday-club.org/

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Thank You

Thank you for reading and for taking an interest in widening access in the arts and nurturing young people’s creative curiosity.

Sincerely,

Colton Kempf

Saturday Club Lead

The Margate School of Art

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 20th November 2026 at 11:56am