1. Get to know your neighbours

Making a Fun Palace is to take a moment to create together, to have chats over a cup of tea, to understand our neighbours a bit better.

2. Try something new

You can try out something new, and it’s fine if it goes wrong or you’re not great at it. Want a go at making a baking-soda volcano? Go for it. Always wanted to try hula-hooping – have a go! Get in a kayak, fly a kite, or try calligraphy.

3. Create culture on your terms

To create excellent culture on YOUR terms.

4. Discover the knowledge in your community

To discover who in your community knows what you need to know, even if you didn’t realise you needed to know it!

Kerris, Bureau Blackburn Fun Palace

5. Practise saying yes

To practice saying ‘yes’ in a world full of ‘no’s

Lauren, Various Birmingham Fun Palaces

6. Decide what matters to you

Fun Palaces is not ‘top-down’ delivery where experts tell you what is art and culture. Instead, it’s a ‘bottom-up’ celebration where you decide what matters.

Ria, Fun Palaces Campaigns Co-ordinator

7. Connect with people outside your usual circles

They bring people together who might never normally meet. You don’t have to be in the same circles, you don’t have to agree on everything, you just have to be willing to share something.

Ellie, Redruth Fun Palaces and past Ambassador

8. Start something that keeps growing

Around 85% of Fun Palaces lead to something else happening; you never know what ripples might come from yours.

9. Help tackle division and isolation

To play a role in tackling the division and isolation so many people report feeling.

Laura, Cwm Garw Fun Palace

10. Celebrate the brilliance on your doorstep

You get to show off the brilliance of the people in your street, neighbourhood or town, and celebrate them!

11. Discover your own superpower

To discover your own superpower – and everyone else’s

Kerris

12. Be part of something bigger

You get to be part of ‘a thing’ that 1000s of other people are doing at the same time as you, and in my experience that feels amazing!

13. Embrace the scrappy and imperfect

It’s a chance to make something scrappy and imperfect. No-one cares if your Fun Palace goes wrong, it will be messy and probably noisy. Brilliant!

14. Have a go at leading

You get to be in the driving seat of your Fun Palace. Even if you’re not usually a leader. Have a go at leading. See how it feels.

15. Bring a local venue to life

To make use of a local, perhaps underused venue, and play a role in breathing some life back into it 🤩

Laura

16. Make room for unexpected encounters

You might get to meet a bearded dragon (True story – someone actually turned up with one to Cwm Garw Fun Palace 2024!)

17. See what you can achieve together

To remind yourself of what can be achieved alongside others working towards a common goal.

Laura

18. Recognise that everyone has something to offer

Because Fun Palaces isn’t just about creativity. It’s about people. It’s about citizenship. It’s about recognising that we all have something to offer. That might be something really meaningful and serious, or it might be completely daft and a bit pointless. Both have value.

Ellie

19. Feel more part of your community

In 2025 72% of Lead Makers said that they feel more a part of their community more since making a Fun Palace

20. Bring more fun into your life

To incorporate more fun into your life!

Laura

21. Celebrate everyday culture together

It’s a moment to come together and practice community cohesion – and to loudly tell the story of the joy, fun and celebration that comes from celebrating everyday culture together.

22. Celebrate Joan Littlewood’s birthday

You can have a cake to celebrate Joan Littlewood’s Birthday.

23. Imagine a different future for your community

It lets us imagine and dream into something different for our communities, and to put it into practice for an hour, a day, a weekend.

24. Believe in the genius in everyone

Because you too believe in the genius in everyone.

25. Share the skills someone else needs

I can’t change the oil in a car, I can’t plait hair, and I kill every houseplant I touch. I would genuinely love someone to show me how to do any of those things…That’s the magic of it. The thing that feels completely normal to you might be exactly what someone else needs

Ellie

26. Build the foundations of collective power

If a community can organise a Fun Palace together, they can also campaign for the other things they need. Fun is the foundation of collective power.

Orla, Luton Fun Palace, Fun Palaces Exec Producer

27. Give yourself permission to be silly

You have full permission to be silly. Let the kids paint the adults’ faces. Try out your best dance moves. Play party games or hide and seek like you’re seven years old again. Get lost in an activity for hours on end.

28. Give something back to your community

To give back to a community who may have raised you or welcomed you, passing on the gift to others

Laura

29. Strengthen community spirit

In 2024 92% of Lead Makers agreed that Fun Palaces creates a stronger sense of community spirit

30. Support your wellbeing

To increase your sense of wellbeing

Laura

31. Join a community-led national movement

To join a national movement that is meaningfully community-led

Laura

32. Learn new skills

You’ll learn new skills – Who knew you’d get so good at risk assessments?! Or find yourself learning how to origami dinosaurs?!

33. Help people do what they want to do

Fun Palaces are an attempt to stop the culture that sees people being told what to do and helping people to do what THEY want to do.

Jack, Past Ambassador Cornwall.

34. Experiment with power, voice and collaboration

On a larger scale – you might play a part in shifting power, locally

Play lets us rehearse different ways of being together. It creates low-risk spaces to experiment with power, voice and collaboration. You can test an idea or try leading, you can listen to someone you’d usually walk past. You can change your mind.

Orla

35. Keep it simple and low key

It doesn’t have to take up lots of resource, it can be light touch and low key.

Fun Palaces Maker 2025

36. Put your community at the heart of culture

To put culture at the heart of your community, and your community at the heart of culture.

37. Grow your local connections

Making a Fun Palace grows local links. Each year around 85% of Makers report at least one new connection following their Fun Palace (the majority of those make several).

38. Join in on your own terms

You can join in on your terms: make a Tiny or Online Fun Palace and join in from your living room if you want to do something smaller, just for you / with one or two other people

39. Showcase your local groups

To showcase all your local groups – perhaps including yours! – and what they have on offer

Laura

40. Create a space where everyone is equal

It’s events like Fun Palaces that make it a community because everybody has that opportunity to join in, to play, to work together, to make suggestions, to be considered equal.

Fun Palace Maker

41. Remind people of their power

To give power back to people and remind them they have it!

Laura

42. Help shape the place where you live

You’ll be actively starting to shape the place where you live; simply by doing.

…when we practise shaping our cultural spaces together [by making Fun Palaces], we are also practising shaping our shared future.

Orla

43. Rethink your place in the community

(Fun Palaces) change the conception we have of our place in the community. They encourage engagement, cooperation, social sharing and understanding.

Farnham Fun Palace

44. Shine a light on the work you already do

Fun Palaces participants and Makers tell us that being part of a national and international campaign helps them shine a light on the amazing work that are already doing locally.

45. Say yes to new opportunities

To say yes, start ripples, create opportunities.

46. Bring together people who might never meet

You’ll bring people together, who may not have otherwise met.

47. Notice the culture already on your doorstep

A Fun Palace gives us a reason to notice the culture that already happens on our doorsteps, inviting us to look again at our neighbourhoods and recognise the knowledge, humour, skills, memories, passions and care that already exist

Rachel, Fun Palaces Producer

48. Make space for everyone to be an artist or scientist

Because you also believe: everyone an artist, everyone a scientist (and you want to create a space to put that into practise)

49. Strengthen community ties for the future

What better way to preserve humanity in an uncertain future than to strengthen community ties and community spirit through fun participatory engagement.

Royal and Derngate Fun Palace, Northampton

50. Change the world with radical fun

To change the world with radical fun.