We’ve been Fun Palaces makers since 2015 and have been collaborating with Fun Palaces over the last year and a bit on a Creative Voices- Activist Voices research project.
We are really excited to announce that later in the year we will be hosting the Fun Palaces exhibition which was created during the process of the research project, and invite you to listen to this podcast about the project featuring a number of Fun Palaces makers from all over the country, including The Bureau!
Fun Palaces is an ongoing campaign for cultural democracy and a weekend of action and celebration, taking place on the first weekend of October every year – during which communities come together to make pop-up Fun Palaces. Cultural democracy is an approach to arts and culture that engages everyone in deciding what counts as culture, where it happens, who makes it and who experiences it.
Stella Duffy and Sarah-Jane Rawlings co-founded Fun Palaces in 2013 to celebrate revolutionary theatre director, Joan Littlewood’s centenary on the 6th October 2014. As more communities, individuals and organisations across the UK asked if they could join in, it quickly became clear that it was never going to be a one-off. In 2021 Kirsty Lothian and Makala Cheung took over as co-directors of the organisation.
Inspired by Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price’s never-built 1960s vision of one building for all arts and science, free to the local community of the East End of London, the 21st century Fun Palaces is about reclaiming public space, encouraging cultural venues to throw open their doors, shining a light on unsung community activism and supporting local people to step up to co-create their own community events. Learning from the communities that take part every year, Fun Palaces has changed and grown, and is now as varied as the people who take part.
