Fun Palaces Returns This October, Celebrating 5 Years

The 5th annual Fun Palaces weekend of UK wide and international events where culture is made by, for, and with people just like you and me.

Fun Palaces is both an ongoing campaign for culture at the heart of every community, and an annual weekend of action - arts, science, craft, tech, digital, heritage and sports events and activities - run by, for and with local communities. Fun Palaces weekend is the first weekend of October every year. They are always free, local, inclusive, hands-on, and YOURS!

This year we are already able to announce a partnership with the region of Bergen in Norway, who have taken on Fun Palaces as their own, for their local communities and even have a Norwegian Fun Palaces page on the Fun Palaces website: http://funpalaces.co.uk/makers/fun-palaces-norway/

>From a simple idea to celebrate Joan Littlewood's centenary in 2014, Fun Palaces has grown to be a campaign for cultural democracy offering access for all to create as well as consume culture, and an annual weekend of activity across the UK and beyond, involving people of all ages and all experience in creating for their own community. Co-Director Stella Duffy is in great demand as a keynote speaker and panelist sharing Fun Palaces' huge growth in the past five years, and in particular their successes in engaging across all socio-economic, ethnicity and age demographics, the Wellcome Trust and Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded Ambassadors Programme supporting grassroots engagement in Cornwall, Bristol, Stoke, Sheffield and Scotland, and new work for 2018 supported by Big Lottery in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Last year 362 Fun Palaces were made by approximately 13,750 local people with 126,000 participants - that's more than the populations Greenland and Bermuda combined! 2018 will undoubtably will continue to build on those figures and Makers are registering their events now.

Stella Duffy OBE, co-founder of Fun Palaces says "We are thrilled at the interest in Fun Palaces work across the board - both as a campaign to genuinely share access for all to create culture - promising a far more inclusive cultural and community landscape in future, and as an opportunity for every community to shine a light on the amazing activities they already do, the amazing people they already are."

Since the first Fun Palaces in 2014, 934 Fun Palaces have been created by over 24,000 local organisers, with 340,000 participants in 13 nations: England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Iceland, Germany, France, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Norway.

In the early 1960s, Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price conceived the Fun Palace as a 'laboratory of fun' and 'a university of the streets'. It was to be a local building, home to the arts and sciences, open and welcoming to all. For many reasons it wasn't possible in 1961 and the Fun Palace building they envisioned never came to fruition, however the concept of a space welcoming and open to all, led by and for local people, remained a GREAT idea. Since 2013 the core team has developed Fun Palaces to embrace all forms of culture, community-led and locally based, with annual live events since 2014.

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