This report evaluates the campaign Fun Palaces, where any group of people can register to be a Fun Palace and participate with a distributed weekend of activity held on the first weekend in October every year. They must commit to offering something that is free, local, innovative, transformative and engaging. A key indicator of the success of the project is the enthusiasm for more makers and communities to want another fun palace in the future. Fun Palaces can promote wellbeing, social capital and community cohesion.

The concept of the Fun Palaces campaign is a reimagining of an idea that was conceived by Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price in the early 1960s in which a Fun Palace was a ‘laboratory of fun, ‘a university of the streets.’ It was to be a temporary and flexible home to the arts and sciences, open and welcoming to all.

Barnett, M. & Thurman, C. (2014). Fun Palaces, Evaluation Report. UK: MB Associates.