A group photo with Pie Factory Music’s young people holding campaign posters taken at the beginning of the campaign in October 2024. Credit Pie Factory Music.
A successful campaign to save the last remaining youth centre in Thanet, one of the country’s most deprived areas.
The Campaign
Ramsgate Youth Centre is the last remaining dedicated Youth Centre in Thanet, one of England’s most deprived coastal areas, and it houses Pie Factory Music, a creative youth work charity offering free music and creative arts programmes, universal youth services, and pastoral support to 8-25 year olds. In 2024, Kent County Council (KCC), which owns the building, was facing an £118 million budget deficit and announced plans to sell the building at public auction. This announcement came six months after the biggest cuts to youth services in Kent on record, and the loss of Pie Factory Music’s core funding.
This announcement meant that Ramsgate Youth Centre’s services could be displaced, and it would be the end of a facility that had been purpose-built as a youth centre in 1969 and served generations of young people in the area. Speaking up against the cuts, Pie Factory Music’s young people talked about Ramsgate Youth Centre as their “second home”, and “a place where [they] feel safe”, so the young campaigners launched Save Our Youth Centre to try to purchase the youth centre from the council directly and safeguard its legacy.
The foyer of the youth centre during a session. Taken in February 2026. Credit Ramsgate Recorder, Luke Ogden.
To be shortlisted for an award and gain national recognition for our Save Our Youth Centre campaign is beyond incredible! We hope that this provides young people and youth organisations with hope that challenges that seem impossible and insurmountable can be conquered with teamwork and joy. If we can do it in our small town in the corner of the southeast, it can be done anywhere.”
Zoë Carassik
CEO, Pie Factory Music
The Change
Over the course of 16 months, the young campaigners launched a crowdfunder that started generating donations from community members; lobbied their district, county and national politicians to raise awareness of their campaign; and engaged local and national press to highlight their story. The young campaigners arranged fundraising events, concerts, and sponsored sleep-outs, which raised over £2,000 and encouraged other community members to do the same. By the end of the campaign, they had received over £25,000 in donations.
In order to demonstrate the youth centre’s importance in the community to the local authority, the young campaigners commissioned a community value assessment of the services run from the building. It showed that the young campaigners saved the council over £580,000 in social services, mental health services, and youth employment services in the previous financial year. It also responded to the council’s claims that selling a youth centre would save them money by proving it to be a false economy. The council would not accept that the social value and return on investment that the young campaigners demonstrated was enough to sell the property to Pie Factory Music at a reduced rate, so the property was listed for auction.
However, in December 2025, Pie Factory Music was granted a last-minute capital grant from the national Pride in Place programme by the Ramsgate Neighbourhood Board and Thanet District Council. This enabled the young campaigners to buy the freehold of the site directly and avoid it going to auction. They successfully went from having a precarious tenancy to being the owners of a site that is now protected for youth services in perpetuity.
The Future
Now, Pie Factory Music is the proud owner of the beloved youth centre. They will be launching a major refurbishment and community build programme, as the building has been neglected and needs substantial repairs and modernisations to make it safe and viable for the future. In purchasing the site, Pie Factory Music also acquired a small annexe building next door to the youth centre, which has been vacant for a number of years. They now have the exciting prospect of determining how this additional building could be used to house partner services or to generate some revenue for their work, ensuring young people get the most out of what they can offer. They are already consulting with young people about what they want and need out of a purpose-built youth centre, and involving them in the design and delivery of the next generation of Ramsgate Youth Centre.
The young campaigners also continue to lobby for re-investment in youth services nationally and locally, particularly with the National Youth Strategy announcement at the end of 2025. Like all youth organisations, they still desperately need revenue funding to pay the youth workers and keep the lights on in their newly acquired premises.
Who else was involved?
The young people at Pie Factory Music (including Luke, Molly, Miles, Jacob, and Crystal); The Pie Factory Music team and Board of Trustees; the community members: parents / carers / teachers / neighbours / social workers / community groups; Journalist Lisa Bachelor; photographer Polly Braden; Thanet District Council; and the Ramsgate Neighbourhood Board.
