Car-free Creative FolkestoneKent
Folkestone is a town full of art. The UK’s biggest urban collection of outdoor artworks is free and open every day across the town. It's easy to get there by train and to explore the town on foot or by bus. Every three years, the Folkestone Triennial puts on a huge show of new site-specific contemporary installations and sculptures, involving artists from around the world. 2025 sees the sixth triennial. Creative Folkestone, the charity behind the triennial and other projects, are always looking for new ways to make the town even artier and there is lots to see at any time of year.
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1. Full-speed to Folkestone
The 2025 Folkestone Triennial runs until 19 October. The exhibition is called How Lies the Land? It’s curated by Sorcha Carey and involves new work by 18 artists. After the triennial is finished, some artworks will become permanent parts of the town’s landscape, joining Folkestone’s unrivalled collection of public art.
- How do I get to Folkestone without a car? High-speed trains from London St Pancras often take less than an hour to reach Folkestone Central station and run regularly throughout the day. There are also frequent trains from Dover Priory, Ramsgate and Charing Cross via Tonbridge.
- How do I get into the town centre from Folkestone Central station? It’s less than a mile downhill, but you can also hop on hourly buses 102, 103 or 104 to reach the town centre (see 2 below), bus station or harbour (see 3 below).
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2. Saunter round the centre
The artworks in Folkestone, including the 2025 Triennial, are plotted in this programme and you can easily explore them on your own. Less than a mile’s walk from the station or a short-but-circuitous bus ride, is the Quarterhouse. The nearest bus stop is The Cube, a building that was brightly painted by Sinta Tantra for the 2017 triennial.
- Folkestone Quarterhouse is a cultural centre with a dynamic programme of art, film, theatre, dance and music. Free tours of the 2025 Folkestone Triennial start from here.
- On the first floor of the Folkestone Quarterhouse, you’ll find the bar inside a light-filled mini-cathedral of mirrors and tree-like gothic forms called The Clearing. This space was created, also in 2017, as an immersive installation and designed by Studio Ben Allen.
- There are several other works to see nearby, including a moving film called Burial by Emilija Škarnulytė, who patiently recorded the decommissioning of Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania with a snake slithering through it.
- At the top of a kids’ slide in Payers Park nearby, there’s a giant yellow salamander, the first part of whole salamander-playground devised by Monster Chetwynd.
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3. Wander by the water
The harbourside area in Folkestone has some of the most amazing art in the most unexpected places. Several buses stop nearby on the Old High Street or it’s a half-hour stroll from the station.
- Inside a white Martello tower, perched on the cliff above Wear Bay Road and open to the public for the first time in decades, is a circular table covered in replica amulets, drawn from traditions that span centuries and continents. This is Katie Paterson’s extraordinary years-long project Afterlife. Each amulet is fashioned from materials that represent the damage of climate change: coral, burnt wood from forests destroyed by fire or stones from to islands menaced by the rising seas.
- Walking downhill from the Martello tower with the sea on your right and straight towards the slope beyond, you’ll pass Jennifer Tee’s Oceans Tree of Life. This huge brick and fused glass seaweed sculpture is built into the grassy top of the cliff.
- Among the bushes and wildflowers above, don’t miss Sara Trillo’s Urn Field, biodegradable sculptures inspired by Iron Age burial urns and created out of chalk cob and plant matter.
- And higher up still, following the red signs, you will reach a shelter with headphones to hear Hanna Tuulikki’s Love (Warbler Remix) composed from fragments human love songs and birdsong along the migratory route of the marsh warbler
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4. Don’t miss…
Wandering along the Harbour Arm, you can see J Maizlish Mole’s fantastically-detailed alternative map, Folkestone in Ruins. Look out for Anthony Gormley’s Another Time XVIII under the walkway: a single metal figure looking out across the sea.
- Down some steps near the end of the harbour arm, don’t miss Red Erratic by Dorothy Cross. It’s a huge block of red Syrian marble with human feet carved on top, suggesting walking, migration and journeys (see photo at the top).
- Stop off at Herbert’s for an artistic ice cream. Emeka Ogboh designed Coastal Drift, a creamy lolly that tastes like lemon cheese cake and is dipped (sherbet dib-dab-style) into an accompanying bag of what looks disconcertingly like sand, but is an amazing salty slightly spicy coating for the lolly.
- Ogboh’s choral sound installation Ode to the Sea is a five-minute walk past Sunny Sands beach. Sit on the steps with your ice cream and listen to the waves and the music…
- Bus 104 runs back up towards the station every half an hour.
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For more car-free adventures in the area...
See our guides to Canterbury and Hastings. Visit Dover Castle or Garlinge Theatre. You could stop off at the Tudor Peacock near Chilham station. And if you want to stay somewhere really atmospheric and remote in this area, are prepared for an adventure to get there or are exploring by bike, check out Romney Marsh Shepherds Huts, where car-free guests get a free breakfast.
