Orla Nicholls of Luton Fun Palace fills us in on her experience of Fun Palaces so far.

What inspired you to create your Fun Palace?
I became interested in Stella Duffy’s tweets about Fun palaces in January – there was mention of a ‘Luton-shaped hole’ on the map at the time and I laughed…. but after thinking about it for a while and remembering how many talented people I knew in Luton who would be interested in the idea, I thought ‘Why not try it?!’ and shortly after the Luton Fun Palace Creative Consortium was born!
What is the most exciting thing in your Fun Palace?
There are lots of potentially exciting elements to our Fun Palace, but one of the best things has been our partnership with Next Generation Youth Theatre for a complex piece of work on creating an interactive audience-led drama set in Luton!
What’s the biggest challenge in making your Fun Palace?
Firstly, finding a suitable venue for hosting all the things we wanted to include under one roof. Then trying to decide which ideas and themes we’d take forward out of the huge list of exciting things we all wanted to do! There were just too many to be feasible, but we’re holding on to them all for another time.
If you could have anything at all at your Fun Palace, what would it be?
We’d love to have some big exciting new technology or gadgets to try out, unlimited arts and science supplies and good weather for the outdoors activities!
 What do you hope will be the most valuable outcome of your Fun Palace?
For people to see the huge range of talent in the various communities in Luton, the opportunity for people to work with new groups or on a new type of project and to really give people the chance to try something new or surprising… and of course for everyone to come away with the desire to help build a bigger and better Fun Palace next year!