With a little over a month to go until the Fun Palaces weekend, it still isn’t too late to join in with making your own Fun Palace, however large or small. Joanne Bartley, Maker of Whitstable Museum of Fun, shares her experiences of making a Fun Palace – and suggests some quick and simple ideas for how you can get involved.

I know there are only a few weeks before Fun Palace weekend on Saturday 4 & Sunday 5 October, but I thought I would write a blog post explaining why I think the Fun Palace concept makes it fine to get something together in no time at all, with only a few people, and no money!

I’ve never created a community event before, but there is a lovely structure to Fun Palaces that gives me the confidence to give it a go.

The thing that got me interested was the line, ‘Everyone an artist, everyone a scientist.’ I am definitely no artist, but when I had my kids I rediscovered drawing. My kids wanted me to draw with them so I drew badly drawn bees, and lopsided people, and all kinds of unrecognisable felt tip creations, and I loved it! Does that make me an artist? I don’t know… but I do know it was fun.

I am certainly not a proper scientist, but at school I learned science, and whenever I make cakes I think about whipped in air, and the coagulation of protein in the eggs. I like knowing these facts so I bore my kids with them whenever we make cupcakes. Does that make me a scientist? I don’t know… but I do know I like knowing these facts.

I take ’everyone an artist, everyone a scientist’ to mean having a go is okay, small things and enthusiasm matter. So our Fun Palace in Whitstable, Kent, certainly won’t be perfect, it definitely won’t be grand, it will have imperfect signage and too many things made with cardboard boxes. But I decided that was fine, because it wasn’t about being an expert in creating a community event, it was about making something free and, of course, fun. So I’m playing with a Fun Palace, enjoying learning new things and I hope a few people in Whitstable will enjoy these efforts.

The other great thing about Fun Palaces is that ‘this is a Fun Palace event’ becomes a banner for people to rally around. Fun Palaces is a national thing with all kinds of people creating them big and small, so this gives me confidence because it shows this isn’t only me on my own. I notice another good thing, I now have a local banner, ‘We’re the Fun Palace of Whitstable!’ which means people in my town who have an idea for making something with art, science or fun (that’s a broad category!) Can come to me and say, ‘I have a little idea, can I do this?’ Of course I say yes, because somehow I’ve blagged a community hall and I need to fill it with stuff..!

So, even with a few weeks to go, and on your own, or maybe with your family or friends, I think you can get involved. I think you could make a Fun Palace too.

So here’s some tips I’ve picked up as an enthusiastic amateur Fun Palace event creator.

Venue

You need somewhere to put a Fun Palace, but because there is no definition of exactly what a Fun Palace is that venue might be any kind of place, it could be tiny, it could be nowhere, you could even make a Fun Palace online.

If you want to find a traditional venue I’ve discovered that people feel an awful lot of goodwill if you say ‘this is a free community event’ and wave your ‘Fun Palace, national event’ banner. There are church halls and school halls, and even if they let you use a space for a bit of the day that might work. There are also open spaces for an outdoor thing. Or what about asking a coffee shop if you could use their shop for the last hour of the day?

Things to put in a Fun Palace

What to put in your Fun Palace? There are a surprising amount of things you can do with what you can borrow or find at home. We googled home science experiments and will be doing things with dancing raisins and macaroni and filter paper. We also looked up easy world records to attempt, we’ll be seeing if anyone can get close to the World Records for stacking pencils or making the tallest toilet paper tower. We have a book swap idea, we have a poetry post box too. We even have a psychology experiment using bubble wrap. We will be getting a lot of knitting wool and fabric together and we’ll let any visitor make some fabric sort of something. We liked ideas of this being sort of a mad country fair so we wanted a food competition, we thought a sandwich competition would be easy to enter, and we have categories for funny face sandwiches as well as delicious ones. Our most ambitious project is creating Cardboard Whitstable, and we have a few workshops to make buildings in the lead up.

You could also just have one thing as your Fun Palace if time is short. Why not just do a fun food completion, or only create a book swap event? A Fun Palace could only take 5 minutes, you can just announce something and see if people will come along. Any Fun Palace event can be promoted on the Fun Palace website.

We had ideas for creating a folly with a cardboard playhouse and letting everyone decorate it. We also thought about making a maze with cardboard and Makedo widgets to stick them together. I also liked the idea of creating ‘all the holidays in one day’, with a snow ball fight using white socks, an advent calendar where you can open all the doors, confetti to play with, or eggs to paint, and you might have a wrapped up gift book swap.

Money

Money will of course be a factor, even cardboard box widgets will cost something. It’s not ideal if your fun palace is funded entirely by you and your friends, but I do think it might be worth doing all the same. I was thinking about the experiences I spend money on, like weekend day outs or family visits to the cinema. These are great experiences, but they cost a lot of money and l don’t think they are anything like as interesting and satisfying as making my Fun Palace. My kids surprised me last week by saying how proud they are that their Mum is making a Museum of Fun! I hope the day might be more memorable than a cream tea at a castle.

There are of course very practical ways to raise money for your Fun Palace. Asking people for things works! We have knitting wool from the amazing WhitKnits, Sugru are giving us stuff to make a Lego stick together sculpture, and we have had some success asking local businesses for small amounts of money. We have applied for a local grant, and I know some Fun Palaces are raising money through crowd funding. The best thing about having no money is that it makes things more about the ideas, which I think is better than hiring someone to create entertainment.

I hope the people of Whitstable will enjoy our Fun Palace on October 5th. Our signs might be printed on my old printer upstairs, our cardboard banner might fall over, we could only get 3 entries in the sandwich making competition, but this is a free event and we’re having a go. I think it’s a great excuse to assemble interesting creations made by an enthusiastic bunch of local people. I like to think that a few people who visit because of the word ‘fun’ might discover a feel for art and science too. Everyone an artist, everyone a scientist, and all that…. I think there should be a third bit, ‘Everyone a Fun Palace maker.’

Joanne Bartley, Whitstable Museum of Fun