Saturday, August 23rd saw the debut of “Bohemia”, the new King’s Mile arts, crafts and produce market on Palace Street and Guildhall Street, featuring local artists, designers and vendors. This event, to be held on the last Saturday of each month, is part of the ongoing attempts to revitalise the King’ Mile.

The Canterbury Wanderer was there to investigate and spoke to some of the stall-holders . There seemed to be a lot if gaps between stalls and halfway down Palace Street, it petered out a bit with just a pie stall and a guy selling ethical coffee, though he did have a great camper van which was open for any customers to sit in with their drink. One stall-holder wished they had a pitch up on Guildhall Street, while another who was stationed outside Debenhams would have preferred a spot somewhere down on Palace Street. Though the market did become busier at lunch time and in the early afternoon, it felt patchy and too spread out, and might benefit in the future from just being condensed down into Palace St, which contains the core of the quirky, independent retailers in the King’s Mile. Let’s face it, Guildhall is just a street with Debenhams on either side of it, and it’s more closed in than Palace Street. I witnessed on stall holder see what they thought was a potential customer, when in fact the passer-by had just seen something in the window of Debenhams. If the length of the market could be condensed down, with the addition of some extras (live music, face painting, performances, more seating etc) to make the casual passer-by stay for a while, it has the potential to be a great gathering place, and achieve its aim of raising the local profile.

The biggest issues seemed to be those of advertising and publicity. Most of the shoppers weren’t aware that the market was on and I personally didn’t see any advertising for it, other than a few posters for it in shop windows down Palace St (so the only people who might see them are those that shop there regularly anyway). There was no feature in this week’s KM (or in the Focus rag that fell out of it). The banners running down the streets are good but don’t really advertise the market itself, and I was told that they weren’t allowed to put up sandwich boards in the High Street, which is the busiest part of city on a Saturday. There’s a lovely website here, but only if you know to look for it in the first place.

Overall, it was not a bad start, with some great creative talent and good food on display, but with some extra promotion and fanfare (how about a parade or some fancy dress or something?) it could have attracted many more people.

We’re going to plug the next market here as much as we can, so if you want to send us your thoughts or tell us your stall will be back in September, please contact us.

Thanks again to everyone who chatted to us or took a flyer, and sorry to anyone we missed.