Snowdown has its own station on the  Dover to London Victoria railway line and the A2/M2 Dover to London road is about a mile to the south-west of the site.
The disused colliery site is to the right of the railway station on the satellite map below.


 

"One of the most curious industrial histories in the whole country, the Kent Coalfield, is in danger of fading from the collective memory altogether".

Ian MacMillan, poet and broadcaster.

Some of the ideas presented to Dover District Council Planning Committee in 2007 regarding the future use of the Snowdown Colliery site were:

Fuelling creativity-
by bringing people together from different disciplines across the arts and sciences. The Snowdown Colliery project will build on the colliery's historical contribution to the UK’s energy needs to create an environment for accelerated innovation and the site will become a pivotal centre for the research, testing and development of both renewable energy sources and technologies and approaches to energy conservation.
In partnership with such organisations as: the Science Museum, the Eden Project, the Tate, The Royal Society for the Arts, The University of Kent and The Welcome Trust, it will explore innovation in sustainability in all its forms.

“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
Albert Einstein.

Innovation-
by developing an environment conducive to the cross fertilisation of ideas. The Snowdown project aims to stimulate enterprise in this field by attracting companies to its dedicated business park that will draw upon the site's facilities as well as supporting the development of micro business and S.M.E's. vocational training and enterprise development will be a major part of the Snowdown project.

"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things."
Theodore Levitt.
 

Space for the arts.

Snowdown will have a multi-purpose performance space that will host live performances including a wide range of music, theatre, comedy, and dance as well as film and visual arts. This performance space will be sufficiently flexible to be used to hold conferences, a vital part of the enterprise, as well as research and dissemination functions of the centre. There will be special commissions to recognise the rich social and economic history of Snowdown Colliery and its environs as well as to explore creativity and put the site on the artistic map. Key to sustainability and audience development will be a diverse programme.

"Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality".
 John Ruskin.

 

The Snowdown project site will also house a major visitor attraction.

"The Snowdown Project is at once brave, admirable and even heroic"

Sir John Tusa, arts administrator, writer and  journalist.

 

See what could be done! "A Future For Snowdown. Fuelling Creativity" in PDF format.