Tell me more about Fun Palaces?
Fun Palaces spring up all over the UK – and beyond – every year on the first weekend in October. Ware’s the Fun Palace is in good company!
Our local event will be NINE this year! That’s right, we ran our first Ware’s the Fun Palace back in 2017, and it’s just getting bigger and better! Join us in doing a happy dance?
Not sure how to do a happy dance?
Just have a go! You see, that’s sort of the point…
“FREE and FUN!”
Fun Palaces are opportunities to try things out – new things you’ve never tried, old things you’ve not done in a while, things you’ve always wanted to have a go at but haven’t had the chance and things you aren’t sure if you’ll like. It’s free to come along, and free to join in.
“A brilliant community spirited day”
Those are the words of one of our local visitors, but lots of others said the same. Whether you’re very young, young-ish, old, even older, absolutely ancient or anywhere in between, Ware’s the Fun Palace is for you. It’s run by a small group of local people (which we’d really love to be a bigger group – find out more by visiting our get involved page), for the local community and we want it to be friendly, welcoming and fun!
Fun Palaces are more than just a weekend of events, though.
‘Fun Palaces’ is a campaign which brings together communities and culture, run by local people for their communities. Fun Palaces have their roots back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when theatre director Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price came up with the idea as a ‘laboratory of fun’ and ‘a university of the streets’. The idea was resurrected more recently, and in 2014 the first Fun Palaces weekend took place. It’s grown from there…
What makes a Fun Palace?
Some Fun Palaces are based in one venue. Others (like ours) are split across a few places. They’re much more about ideas and activities, with communities coming together to try new things, than about a particular building or space.
Every Fun Palace is different, but they all have a few things in common.
- It’s free to take part. Very few people involved in running Fun Palaces are paid.
- They’re run by local people, for their local communities.
- They’re inclusive and for all ages.
- They’re hands-on and creative – as much about creating community as creating culture.
- They’re really varied. We talk about ‘culture’, but we use that to include all sorts of things, like arts, science, crafts, tech, digital, heritage, sport and more.
You can find out more from the national Fun Palace’s website here.