Prospect Cottage needs you now
A note on rewards: We are grateful for your patience while we produce the bespoke rewards offered as part of the #SaveProspectCottage campaign. These have faced significant delays during lockdown, as our suppliers have been working with a reduced workforce and capacity due to furlough and social distancing measures. We are working hard to get your rewards to you; please keep an eye on your inbox for updates. Thank you for your support.
Join the campaign to protect Derek Jarman’s legacy, and inspire creativity in generations to come.
On the windswept shore of Dungeness, visionary British filmmaker, artist and activist Derek Jarman transformed a Victorian fisherman’s hut into a sanctuary of art and imagination.
Prospect Cottage and its iconic garden stand testament to his defiant spirit, and have the potential to inspire artists and visitors long into the future.
But they are at risk. Help us raise £3.5 million to #SaveProspectCottage, and secure its future as a centre of creative activity – for everyone.
Derek Jarman (1942-94) is one of the most influential figures in 20th-century British culture.
More than 25 years after his death, Prospect Cottage, his former home and garden, continues to be a site of pilgrimage for people from all over the world, who come to be inspired by its stark beauty and by Jarman’s legacy.
From poetry etched into panes of glass, to Jarman’s driftwood sculptures and the remarkable garden he coaxed from the shingle, it represents the most complete distillation of his creativity and determination.
With expert care overseen by Creative Folkestone, Kent’s leading arts organisation, the garden will be restored and will continue to evolve as it did during Jarman’s lifetime.
A residency programme for artists, writers, gardeners, filmmakers, academics, activists and others will engage as many people as possible with Jarman’s life and work, and for the first time, members of the public will be able to apply to visit inside the cottage.
And Tate will take on permanent loan some of the most important and vulnerable archive material from the cottage, including Jarman’s sketchbooks, letters, drawings and photographs, forming a publicly accessible collection at Tate Britain specific to Dungeness – with huge potential to inspire new research, exhibitions and displays.
To make this happen, Prospect Cottage needs you.
We are crowdfunding to meet the £3.5 million needed to secure the future of Prospect Cottage as a centre of creative activity.
Every contribution brings us closer to our goal.
As a thank you for your donation, you can choose from a range of rewards created by leading artists and supporters of the campaign. Rewards include limited-edition prints, objects and works of art; please do keep a look out for new rewards throughout the campaign.
Thanks to the support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Linbury Trust, private individuals and Art Fund’s own grant, we have made great progress towards our £3.5 million target. But there is still a way to go before our deadline of 31 March.
Without this appeal, the cottage is at risk of being sold privately, its contents dispersed, and artistic legacy lost.
We cannot do this without your help.
Join us to protect Derek Jarman’s legacy, and inspire creativity in generations to come.
Latest updates (22)
July 2022
Public visits to Prospect Cottage are available to book from July, thanks to you
We’re thrilled to bring you some exciting news on Prospect Cottage, as Derek Jarman’s former home and creative space in Dungeness will be open for pre-booked visits from July to December 2022.
This would not have been possible without your support. We’re extremely grateful for the generosity of all those who supported the landmark campaign to #SaveProspectCottage. Thanks to you, this remarkable place can continue to inspire for generations to come.
At the cottage, visitors will be able to view works of art, gain greater insight into the life and work of this extraordinary artist in his creative haven, and reflect on the profound importance of this special place. Much work has been, and is being, undertaken to protect the authentic appearance and atmosphere of the cottage and garden, and to bring the garden back to the vibrancy of Jarman’s lifetime.
The cottage will be open for pre-booked one-hour tours from July, with a maximum of four people able to enter at one time. Pre-booking is essential. The gardens remain open to all.
You can enjoy 50% off your visit with a National Art Pass – just make sure to bring your membership card along when you visit.
For full information on visiting, and to book tickets and your timeslot, please visit the Prospect Cottage: Public Visits page on Creative Folkestone’s website.
Once again, thank you for your support of #SaveProspectCottage. We look forward to keeping you updated with more news on the forthcoming artist residency programme, and plans from Tate to share key pieces from Jarman’s Dungeness archive.
November 2020
A beautiful film recently shot at the cottage and update on rewards
Today we wanted to share with you a beautiful film recently shot at the cottage.
Strange Concord: Music and Words from Prospect Cottage features acclaimed actor Ben Whishaw reading from Derek Jarman’s diaries, interspersed with music by John Zorn and Henryk Górecki.
In this spellbinding 70-minute film, Jarman’s thoughts, memories, observations and experiences as related in his 1989-90 Modern Nature journals are read inside and outside the cottage, punctuated by music composed over the same period of time: Zorn’s The Dead Man: 13 Specimen for String Quartet and Górecki’s Good Night, Op 63.
The film is introduced by Alastair Upton, director of Creative Folkestone, Kent’s leading arts organisation and the new custodians of Prospect Cottage. It was shot as part of their recent Autumn Reads event, an online festival exploring Jarman’s diaries, and you can watch some of the other events too on their YouTube channel – including the Observer’s Allan Jenkins on the role that gardening can play in mental wellbeing and writer Hisham Matar on the relationship between art and life.
Thank you for supporting #SaveProspectCottage. As you know, rewards for this campaign faced significant delays due to the timing of the campaign’s end during lockdown and while our suppliers have been working with reduced workforce and capacity due to furlough and social distancing. Thank you once again for your continued patience.
We’re working closely with the artists to finesse your rewards and send them out to you. For those of you awaiting Howard Sooley’s prints and book, here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at Howard signing copies of Derek Jarman’s Garden. As the weather turns colder we hope they’ll bring a dash of spring and summer into your days!
With thanks to...
A big thank you to all project backers. You made art happen.