The Big Gig – Pie’s 20th birthday party

Pie is 20 and it’s time to party! Come celebrate with us at Elsewhere Margate (21-22 The Centre, CT9 1RL) for our BIG GIG on Saturday 3 December from 7pm.

A night of live music with incredible musicians, including some of our young Emerging Artists – debdepan – alongside seasoned performers Falle Nioke and Pie alumni Evan Williams. Plus meet the young people who make us who we are.

We’ll then party the night away with DJs and 20th-birthday revelry. We’d love to see you there as we celebrate the achievements of the past 20 years and the beauty that is the East Kent music scene.

Tickets £10 / £5 (low-wage ticket price).

Please note there is a £1 booking fee

Book >

This is a 14+ years event.

Proceeds from the event will go to support our work.

In the last 20 years, we’ve

🟡Supported 50,000 young people in East Kent
Through innovative programmes that empower young people to influence their own lives positively.

⚫Held 167,346 sessions
Providing a safe space for young people to connect, grow, be inspired, be seen, be heard, and be themselves.

🟡Raised £5 million+
To create opportunities that lead to progression, employment, and better life chances, especially for those facing challenging life circumstances

We’re all about making a positive difference in young lives through youth work, music and creative arts, and pastoral support.

Pie is 20 this year. It has always been one of our top priorities as a youth charity to raise the voices of the young people around us.

Listening to young peoples hopes and dreams for their futures is extremely important and our belief is that every young person deserves the right to equal opportunity and that young people shape our future.

In August, a group of young people from Thanet and Dover took part in stop motion animation workshops with, artist Hannah Whittaker in which they learnt lots of different mediums, that can be used to make their final animation. We asked them to work with the idea: ‘The World We’re Dreaming Of’. They did a fantastic job thinking about their hopes and dreams for the future as inspiration to create some brilliant animations both together and individually.

Pie is turning 20 this year and we hope that by offering free creative workshops like these, it will help to give platforms to young people and help them to express their feelings in a safe environment without judgment. Using the arts to open up discussions into aspirations and dreams really helps to engage young people with visualising their futures.

It was brilliant watching the young people’s dreams come to life, they worked in a range of different materials to make different animations. Using Card to create people and faces, Bluetack to make characters, plasticine and various other craft bits and bobs. The young people got to learn how to use new software to create their animations. No dream, no matter how big or small, should be wasted, and even if dreams don’t become reality, they can lead to other things in the future. Gaining these skills helped young people work together in groups, connecting with one another through art and having passions in common.

Have a look at some of the brilliant animations made by the young people from this project:

Keep an eye out on our website for upcoming workshops and sessions: www.piefactorymusic.com/whats-on/

Thank you to Reconnect Kent for funding this project and helping young people connect with one another about their ambitions for the future.

Pie’s Emerging Artists launch the first single on their record label, Wantsum Music?

Debdepan (Deb-De-Pan), Kent’s rising female duo, release their genre-bending first song Darkest Hour, on 16 September — marking the second release of our emerging youth record label Wantsum Music?

Childhood friends Chelsea Tolhurst and Grace Bontoft established the band during the first lockdown in 2020, out of a growing need to express themselves and create the music they wanted to hear. Proficient guitarist and vocalist Chelsea and gifted bassist Grace are known for their quick-fire creativity, often writing a song in a day and performing it that same night.

Discovered by Pie Factory Music’s Emerging Artists and the Wantsum Music? collective, Debdepan’s ethereal, experimental sound and grassroots ethos chimed with the label, which launched in autumn 2021 to promote and support young homegrown talent.

“Lyric-wise Darkest Hour is open for interpretation; but the origin of the song is personal, it’s a reflection on an experience I had, that I needed to capture musically in order to move through it” says Chelsea.

“After modifying the BPM numerous times, Darkest Hour is intended to captivate listeners, to move them through one place emotionally to another – to journey to the quiet within the loud” adds Grace.

Following several successful live gigs throughout Kent (Elsewhere and The Albion Rooms in Margate, Tunbridge Wells Forum, Ramsgate Festival of Sound, Maidstone Fringe Festival) the duo have honed their progressive style, reminiscent of Warpaint, connecting closely to audiences. Chelsea and Grace are now partnering with Wantsum Music? to take their music to the next level and to even more people across Kent and beyond.

Listen and download Darkest Hour on all streaming platforms and Wantsum Music? Bandcamp at www.wantsummusic.bandcamp.com

At Pie, we’re acutely aware of the rise in mental health support needed for young people.

Over the past two years, you’ve helped us to raise nearly £10,000 through our Soundcheck campaign to enable us to offer free counselling for young people in Thanet and Dover.

We are now offering free 1-to-1 counselling support for over 18s every Wednesday at Pie HQ in Ramsgate.

Trainee Counsellor Rohan has joined our team of counsellors to give these sessions as part of his qualification.

To sign up, individuals simply need to email us at info@piefactorymusic.com.

Meet our new Counsellor Rohan

Hi, I’m Rohan 👋

I offer a non-judgemental space.

I’ll listen to you, accept you for who you are, and try to understand what’s going on in your life from your point of view.

I don’t offer advice or tell you what to do, instead, I try to support and empower you to find your own ways to cope better with whatever issues you are facing.

Grace, Girls Programme participant

Hi my name’s Grace 👋

I had recently moved to the area from Essex and Rachel who was my next-door neighbour who runs the girl’s group invited me to come and join in.

Being a part of The Feminist Complex (that’s what we called the group) has really helped with my social anxiety. The Covid lockdown had meant I felt quite anxious being around other people and I found it hard to socialise again. The group opened up many opportunities to build on my knowledge of sound engineering, and it has given me purpose and friendship.

The support of the Girls Programme leader Rachel and session worker Moa has inspired me to volunteer at Rosslyn court in Margate (a venue that hosts a range of live gigs) and attend the Tech 31 workshop at the Gulbenkian in Canterbury, which has given me a lot of experience and made me feel like I belong.

The change in myself being in The Feminist Complex has given me a lot of confidence

It has helped me with my social skills and enabled me to leave the house, it’s given me knowledge on how studios work and extended my work on Logic, then at Rossyln Court and the Gulbenkian I learnt about how to use different desks in live event situations.

We performed as part of POW! festival in March 2022 at Ramsgate Music Hall.

I created an original track for the event from field recordings and transposition of music from a Japanese anime game which was played at interludes, amongst the other members of The Feminist Complex singing and dancing.

My favourite experience with The Feminist Complex has been when we went and saw the Frankenstein beatbox at the Gulbenkian- that was a really cool production and it was fun to shout out a bunch of songs on the bus home 😂

Collaborating with Kim from Palm Bay Music was a lot of fun- I learnt a lot. Kim understood my anxiety and dyslexia and gave me a lot of confidence in studio work, which has been really great.

What are you planning next for your music projects?

As far as the future is concerned, I’m excited to be continuing going to Rosslyn Court and getting hands-on experience there, and I have been invited to Tom Thumb Theatre in Margate – another opportunity to carry on doing what I love.

If I could describe my experience of being a key member of The Feminist Complex it would be:

Challenging, motivating, and learning

Stories like Grace’s make you realise that what starts out as a chance to be creative, can become so much more for a young person. It can be that transformative experience that helps them with another aspect in their life, in this case Grace’s social anxiety following the pandemic. If you would like to donate towards our ongoing work to empower and inspire young people CLICK HERE

We’re proud to have launched an important new programme, Open Arms, for young unaccompanied asylum seekers and refugees aged 13 – 21 years.

Taking place as an open session every Friday from 5 – 7pm at our HQ Ramsgate Youth Centre, it’s a safe, relaxed environment for these young people to enjoy music, art, games and make friends. Food and drink is provided and we’ll be cooking together, making music and more.

It’s FREE and no need to book – just turn up on the day.

We have a small budget to offer travel expenses and can offer support to book a bus, train or taxi if needed, tell us before or save your receipt for reimbursement.

This truly is what we’re about – supporting ALL young people, using music as a vehicle to bring people together, promote equality and find joy.

The programme is for Young Unaccompanied Asylum Seekers and Refugees aged 13 – 21 years, in the care of Kent County Council/Medway local authority or another local authority and is generously funded by NHS Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group.