We think this might be a series of ‘how we’re doing’ reports, which will also be useful for those of you wondering what you might do yourselves.

Here’s how the Farnham Fun Palace people are making theirs :

Our Fun Palace is being made by a group of colleagues from various nationalities : Portuguese and French mainly, but also Brazilian, South African, Slovak and Spanish (oh yes, there may be 1 or 2 English players too).

Because we’re all working shift and our job is 24/7, there are quite long stretches where we cannot work together but we develop ideas and when we meet we tend to have fairly productive days.

We are trying to document our progress with photographs and by keeping some sort of ‘journal’ on Twitter so we can keep a record of the good (and the bad) ideas.

We are quite surprised by the response from the community: people are keen to be part of a community-led project. Even though most people did not consider us (foreign nationals) as part of the community. Simply talking to them about the Fun Palaces helps redefine the term ‘community’ in a much broader sense. So our Fun Palace will most likely be quite political.

We have had some great response from small, independent organisations. Not so from bigger ones ‘too busy’ to get involved.

We get to sit down and speak to people we have lived alongside for a few years now and never engaging with them. It creates a social link that persists outside the Fun Palaces.

We have all sorts of people involved : a ceramics café, a record shop, the library, the castle, a pub, our very own colleagues who will be an active part of our fun palace, a band who will play and teach percussions. We are also talking to a language school, the arts college, the art gallery, the local theatre/cinema, a volunteer centre, the different schools (they should be interested in the ceramics workshop). Of course there will be an international banquet at the end of the day!

Voilà Voilà
Carine