At its heart, a Fun Palace is a celebration of creativity, community, and culture, made by the people, for the people. This grassroots movement empowers everyone to share their skills, passions, and local knowledge in free, welcoming spaces.
Often Fun Palaces are climate-friendly by nature, and in 2024 83% of Fun Palaces Makers said they took sustainability into consideration when making their Fun Palace. This blog covers ways to increase sustainability, hopefully encouraging you to consider how you can make joyful community events that respect and protect our planet.
Sustainability and the Fun Palaces Ethos
Fun Palaces are often inherently low-cost and DIY, and that’s often more sustainable by default. Sometimes the magic lies in simplicity: from seed swaps in a community garden to storytelling on your estate’s green space, a Fun Palace can be anything your community dreams up. But being intentional about climate impact helps us go even further.
In our sustainability workshop, we explored ways to:
- Reduce waste and cut down on new materials by reusing, borrowing, and recycling
- Use local venues to reduce travel and support your community
- Share resources between groups and events
- Embrace creativity over consumption
Guest Speaker: Fun Palaces Maker Tamasin Rhymes from Greener & Cleaner
Tamasin Rhymes joined us to share insights from both her experience of making Fun Palaces and her work with Greener & Cleaner, a Southeast London-based charity in Bromley, helping communities take practical climate action and form connections. She spoke about making being sustainable easy – thinking about:
- The location and travel arrangements – encouraging people to use sustainable transport: walk, wheel or use public transport
- Creating low-waste decorations – maybe you can turn waste into something beautiful, or use chalk on the pavement to entice attendees
- Materials for the Fun Palace – more on this below
- Disposing of waste – can the things you make be easily split for recycling, can any extra materials find a new home, can any extra food be donated? Remember, the less waste the better for our planet!
Tamasin’s takeaway? Talking to people about climate action can inspire climate action. Explain why you’re doing things in a climate-friendly way at your Fun Palace to bring people along the journey with you, and inspire them to be more climate-conscious.
Smart Sourcing: Free, Local, Shared
Try thinking about how you can turn other people’s waste or unwanted items into activities at your Fun Palace. We discussed some ways to source materials without cost or carbon impact:
- Freecycle, Olio, and local Facebook Marketplace groups – find things for free or cheap which other people don’t want
- Libraries of Things, Fat Llama and tool banks – find things to borrow, use and return
- Schools, art centres, community centres, youth centres or faith buildings- find things not often used to share
You’ll find more suggestions in the Fun Palaces Sustainability Toolkit! Building relationships with local repair cafes, zero-waste shops, and green charities/businesses could help with providing materials, finding people to help organise the Fun Palace, and longer-term connections in the community.
Think about offering simple, fun activities that educate without overwhelming. Could you show that climate action can be community-led, inclusive, and joyful through the activities you have at your Fun Palace?
Use the Climate Checklist
The Fun Palaces Climate Checklist in our Sustainability Toolkit is a simple way to review your plans through a green lens. It covers things like:
- Energy and transport
- Materials and waste
- Accessibility and inclusion
It’s not about being perfect – it’s about making better choices together.
Inspiration from Climate-Focused Organisations
We rounded out the session by signposting some excellent organisations that offer guidance, toolkits, and creative ideas:
- Julie’s Bicycle: mobilising the arts and culture sector to talk action on the climate, nature and justice crisis
- We Are Possible: inspiring people in the UK to take the action the climate crisis demands
- Greener & Cleaner: equips people and organisations with inspiration, resources and skills to work towards the social change required to combat the climate crisis
These groups are brilliant resources for embedding sustainability into everything from funding to programming. There’s even more organisations in our Sustainability Toolkit.
Stay Connected
Whether you’re planning your first Fun Palace or are a seasoned Maker, we’re here to help. Check out the full Sustainability Toolkit, follow us on social media, and don’t hesitate to reach out: hello@funpalaces.co.uk.
Let’s build a world where community events bring joy and make a difference.
Because culture belongs to everyone. And so does our planet.