If you are aged 16-18 and want to make a Fun Palace, then you are in the
right place. Fun Palaces are all about people taking charge and leading
culture for themselves and that includes young people.
In this pack we’ve included everything you might need to know to help you
make your Fun Palace, but if you have any further questions, don’t hesitate
to get in touch.

What are Fun Palaces?
Fun Palaces are both an ongoing campaign and a weekend of celebration.
If you are wanting to make a Fun Palace, then the weekend is a great time
to do it. The weekend of celebration happens every year on the first
weekend of October, when anyone can be a Fun Palace Maker. On the
weekend, Makers run fun, free and locally-led activities, public venues
hand over their space for a community-led takeover and similar events
happening throughout the year can be shared and celebrated as part of the
Fun Palaces movement.

What happens at a Fun Palace?
Whatever you want! Fun Palaces are all about sharing passions, skills and
interests – it’s a chance to share whatever it is you love doing with your
local community. And for them to share what they love doing with you!
Past Fun Palaces have had: yoga, ukulele playing, battle rap, orange peel
carving, poetry writing, dancing, printmaking, lego-building, laptop
dismantling, cake baking, instrument making, treasure trails, guided walks
and animation workshops, to name but a few.

Watch our 2024 Fun Palaces video to see Fun Palaces in action.

Getting Started: You may already have a really clear idea of what you want to do, or may
want to think a bit more. The getting started document on the website will
give you some ideas of what to do first.

Finding a Venue:
There are a lot of benefits involved in holding your Fun Palace at a venue
that already holds events for the public (it will become clear why further
down). Fun Palaces can take place in schools, libraries, museums,
theatres, sports centres, outdoor community spaces to name but a few.
Head to our finding a venue document for more advice and information on
this.

Making a Fun Palace on a Budget
Making a Fun Palace needn’t cost a fortune, in fact, hopefully the costs can
be kept very low.
Here are a few ideas for you on how to keep the costs of your Fun Palace
down.
● Start with what you have. What’s around you that you can use? What
are your own skills and expertise? What positive things is your
community known for? What does it have to offer?
● Ask around locally. Fun Palaces are local, community events so this
is a great place to start. Put something out in your local paper, share
it on local social media pages, or use word of mouth
● Is there a local space or community hub that you could use for your
Fun Palace? Fun Palaces can happen anywhere, including
community centres, libraries, theatres, shopping centres, community
gardens, schools, colleges and sports centres – to name a few.

● Can you borrow things you need from somewhere? Eg- art supplies
from a local school or college. Sports equipment from a local sports
club. It’s always worth asking, and when you explain about Fun
Palaces and your goal, you may find people are more than willing to
offer this type of ‘in-kind’ support.
● Charity shops are a great place to look for anything you might be
after. Is there something you can buy cheaply and upcycle? Or use
the parts to make something else? Or even take it apart and see if
you can put it back together again. (Our Sustainability toolkit also has
lots of ideas for how you can source things for your Fun Palace in a
not-expensive and climate friendly way.)

Funding your Fun Palace
Lots of Fun Palaces are created with no additional funds at all. Have a look
at our Funding your Fun Palace document to see what some other Fun
Palaces have done in the past.
Local Council – sometimes local councils have small pots of money for
community events, so it would be worth looking at what is available in your
region. If you happen to be in a Fun Palaces Ambassador region (Bristol,
Cornwall, Devon, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Rotherham,
Gateshead or Sheffield) get in touch with your Ambassador, as they may
be able to advise of funding pots available in your area.
The best idea is to keep your Fun Palace small and manageable, this in
turn will keep the cost down.
Here are some small fundraising suggestions:

● A car wash – could you do it at lunch or after school/uni/college and
wash teachers/lecturers/staff cars?
● A sponsored challenge. People often do walks or runs, but think
outside the box. What would challenge you the most?
● Bake sale, coffee morning or afternoon tea event
● How about an Art Auction?
● Organise a Bingo, quiz, music night
● A raffle. You can ask for donations of prizes, keep ticket sales open
for a week or so (this allows people to buy tickets when it suits them),
or run it during an event. Suggestions of who to ask – possible chosen
charity suggestion.

Digital Fun Palaces
Another way to keep costs down on your Fun Palace could be to make
yours a Digital Fun Palace (if you want to). Since the start of the pandemic,
a lot of people have become much more familiar with using tech to hold
online events. We have some ideas in our Digital Fun Palaces pack –
although you may have plenty of your own ideas. And if you want to share
your ideas for Digital Fun Palaces with others, please feel free to email
them to: amie@funpalaces.org.uk and we can add them to this toolkit!

Risk Assessment
Any event open to the public will need a risk assessment. If you’re working
at a venue or with a group, this might automatically be their responsibility –
so do check. A risk assessment shows that you have thought of any risks
to the people coming to your Fun Palace and have done everything in your
power to prevent them from happening. Risks could be anything from a
wire that poses a trip hazard, to a dance session in which people could hurt themselves, to people using scissors in a craft workshop. We have a template risk assessment here which you can use for your Fun Palace. You
just need to fill it out before your Fun Palace takes place, and keep a hold
of it until after the Fun Palace has happened.

Insurance
Any public event, held in person needs insurance, although the risks
involved in your Fun Palace may seem fairly low, it’s important to have
insurance just incase. The good news is, a lot of venues and groups will
already have Public Liability Insurance (PLI) in place covering their events –
so this is worth checking early on, and hopefully you’ll find that you’re
covered. If you do need to organise PLI, Creative Lives have a brilliant
document with more information on this here.
Insurance may be one of the things you may need to pay for, for your Fun
Palace – but hopefully the fundraising section has given you some ideas on
how to cover running costs such as this one.

Safeguarding
Anything taking place in a public space requires a safeguarding policy. This
is to ensure that everyone – especially more vulnerable members of society
are protected. Safeguarding can feel scary if you haven’t had to do it
before. Your best bet is to make your Fun Palace in collaboration with a
group or venue who already work with groups of people. As with PLI, they
will likely already have safeguarding policy in place which can be used to
cover your Fun Palace – be sure to have this conversation early on.
Another thing can be to ask parents / carers to accompany younger
children taking part, so that you’re not responsible for them. There is some
helpful info on safeguarding for here at the NSPCC website. If you are holding a digital Fun Palace you will need to think about digital safeguarding: how to keep everyone safe online.
If you have any further questions then please get in touch with the Fun
Palaces team, you can email us on hello@funpalaces.co.uk and we will be
happy to answer any questions you may have.