Ahead of the Fun Palaces Weekend in October 2024, the team behind Make and Chat Mondays Fun Palace invited our Director Amie Taylor to join their planning meeting at the Telegraph Hill Centre, Southeast London.
It’s been a few years since I sat in on a Fun Palaces planning meeting, back when I was on the Maker team at Brockwell Lido Fun Palace. So today’s joy was being invited along to Fun Palace planning meeting at Telegraph Hill Centre in South London.
Make and Chat Mondays is a group led by Sue Mayo with Raj Bhari, as part of the Breaks & Joins project. They meet at the centre each Monday, offering a free space where people can come to join in with art, creative writing, and conversation. It’s also a space ‘to reflect on the repair of our stuff, ourselves, our community, and our planet.’ It runs in the same space as the repair cafe – Mend it with Mo. They are currently planning their Fun Palace for the 2024 weekend (4th-6th October).
I was warmly greeted as soon as I walked in the door by Raj who co-runs the group with Sue. I had a cup of tea in my hands within minutes and was soon looking through some beautiful bowls the group have been making from coloured tissue over the past few Mondays. People were arriving with things for Mo to fix at the Repair Cafe, and the gathering soon got underway.
Fun Palaces have always been about process as much as product, and I am reminded of this as I listen to the group collectively dream their Fun Palace this afternoon, ideas excitedly getting thrown into the pot. Will it be possible to get some clay? A trampoline? A donkey? Everyone works together to answer these questions. And everyone is thinking about what they might bring to the Fun Palace, the arts, the sciences and the whacky and wonderful (I won’t give away the secrets of the Make and Chat Mondays Fun Palace, but there are some excellent things in the pipeline.) They discuss activities they’ve tried in the group over the past few months, and which ones they might like to share with their wider community. ‘What will people want when they arrive at the Fun Palace?’ Someone asks. ‘A cup of tea’, another suggests – everyone agrees.
There are also, of course, challenges – what if the weather’s bad? How will people know to come? How will people know that the Fun Palace is for them? Solutions are plentiful. Some tarpaulin or marquees to keep things dry. Posters, social media, local notice boards and groups to help advertise. I remember the arrows we used to chalk on the pathways to guide people to our Fun Palace and throw it in as an idea.
Everyone hugs goodbye at the end – I am included in this, and am a little sad to leave the Fun Palaces action behind and not be a part of the future preparations, I already feel a part of it after only a couple of hours.
I’m reminded of the Fun Palaces meetings I attended when we were making ours, the dreaming big (and making it smaller if needed), the ideas, the excitement and most of all the connection.
This afternoon really brought home the fact that Fun Palaces is ours, all of ours – we collectively own it, and we are all finding out how to do it all the time. And there are as many right ways to make a Fun Palace as there are Fun Palaces (which to date is 2669). If you’re getting together with your local community in the coming weeks and months, we (the support hub team: Amie – that’s me, Adam, Rachel, Orla, Ayesha and Alex) will be very much be thinking of you, and hope you find as much joy and connection in the planning as the day itself. Let us know how you get on (I’m always happy to pop a blog on our website of how it’s been for you!)
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Every year thousands of people make Fun Palaces for their own local community – sharing skills, meeting new people, creating connections.