There are a lot of words we use when talking about Fun Palaces, some you may be more familiar with, some less so. Hopefully this list will help a bit with that.
Fun
Light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment. [Source]
Palace
(old-fashioned) used in the names of large buildings, such as cinemas or places where people go dancing. (Source)
Fun Palaces
- The campaign for cultural democracy.
- The events that people make putting cultural democracy into practice.
Cultural Democracy
The term Cultural Democracy describes an approach to arts and culture that actively engages everyone in deciding what counts as culture, where it happens, who makes it, and who experiences it. [Source]
Maker
Someone who makes a Fun Palace.
Lead Maker/s
The people leading on Making a Fun Palace (usually the person who signs up the Fun Palace on the map).
Participant
Someone who goes to a Fun Palace, but isn’t involved in the Making of it.
Weekend of Celebration
The first weekend of October (Joan Littlewood’s birthday weekend) – this is when we invite people to make a Fun Palace. We do it on this weekend, because our Fun Palaces were originally made to celebrate Joan Littlewood’s centenary.
Handing Over
When we talk about ‘handing over’ we usually mean venues or spaces that do the programming for their communities handing over the space to the community for the Fun Palaces weekend (or longer) to let them use it how they choose.
Joan Littlewood
The theatre director who had the original idea for Fun Palaces in the 1960s, it never came to fruition in her lifetime. Read more about her here.
Cedric Price
The architect who worked with Joan to develop blueprints for the original Fun Palace (although it was never built). Read more about him here.
Creative Riots
Creative Riots is the strand of Fun Palaces work that invites people to find and share creative ways of protesting. Creative Riots may happen as one off activities or as part of a Fun Palace. Read more about Creative Riots here.
Radical Fun
The idea that fun can change the world – because it truly can. When we come together in our communities to create fun, we also create new opportunities for ourselves, we strengthen our bonds and if we can make a Fun Palace together, we can also campaign for the other things we need.
Secret Skill
We encourage people to share their secret skills at a Fun Palace. Your secret skill is not your job. It’s more the thing that you love doing, the thing that people call you up for advice on. It might be singing karaoke, knitting, being able to lead a local walk, making sculptures out of vegetables or creating musical instruments from everyday objects (or something completely different).
