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Despite a high profile rebrand and relaunch in 2015, Dreamland Margate remained incomplete, incoherent, and within a year, back in administration. Nonetheless, a will remained that the park could yet tell a new story, and reclaim its crown at the top of a UK destination market.
Neverland was challenged to tell that story.
Margate is slowly rediscovering an authenticity lost in the late 20th century, and Dreamland is ideally placed to drive that change
We believed that Dreamland could again be the reason to revisit Margate: a beacon that attracts, rather than a lighthouse that warns off, but only if it moves from being a ‘what’ that hasn’t worked, to a ‘why’ that provides a new dynamism, proactively appealing to a new demographic, and embracing the original.
Our audience need to feel like they’re discovering a new reality, and then want to talk about it, both online and off, so we needed to create a destination that people don’t just want to visit, but need to experience.
A reimagined Dreamland can drive regeneration through playful but intelligent narration of a new, considered story, but in that storytelling, it had to avoid cliché, demand quality, and demonstrate class.
We needed to generate curiosity in a newly empowered market.
We needed to create an experience, that is different every time.
We needed to create a reason to choose Dreamland.
We needed to Reinvent Heritage.
Working with the client, Sands Heritage, architects D’Raw Studio, and landscape designers, Aecom, the park has been entirely reimagined.
New levels have been introduced to offer new sightlines, new pathways laid to propose new journeys and new zones created to increase dwell time.
A full site plan redesign, intensive civil engineering and extensive planting have transformed a 1950’s ‘car park with rides’ into a welcoming oasis, built to serve a 21st century audience, and Neverland – creative lead for the open space development of the wider Dreamland estate – curated and commissioned a handpicked group of creative studios to design and build installations, bars and environments.
Visitor numbers are up 400%, feedback is unilaterally positive, global promoters are signing up to use the venue (eg Gorillaz/Demon Days 2017), and the park is once again, out of administration.
Neverland has told a new brand story, and successfully repositioned Dreamland’s Amusement Park as
a unique destination venue, true to both its past, and its revised identity.