4 – Imagination is free

‘Yes. No idea. I don’t know. Who knows? Yes.’

Since I heard about Fun Palaces a few months ago, I’ve been intrigued by how this idea has grown so far, so fast. What started four years ago as an open question at a conference has snowballed into something like a social movement. In the first year (2014) about 3,000 people were involved in making 138 Fun Palaces. There were a few more (142) in 2015 but this October there were 290! How does that happen? When I asked Stella Duffy, who struck the first spark at the conference, her reply was intriguing.

The people who made the Fun Palaces in Whitstable and in Farnham – who were following me for my books – both said to me on Twitter “Can anyone do this?”  We’re just going, “Yes. No idea. I don’t know. Who knows? Yes.”  Then it became a thing…  

Sandwiched between permissive affirmations, she was open about not knowing – indeed, about not feeling responsible for knowing. That culture of shared ownership, backed up with light and consistent support developed by Fun Palaces HQ, has empowered thousands of people to have fun with Joan Littlewood’s belief that art and science is open to all.

It’s too soon to have details of what happened in 2016, but the Fun Palaces team (4 people, all part time) did produce a report on what happened in 2015. Three things particularly struck me in that:

• First, half the Fun Palaces were made by community groups or individuals; less than a third were produced by arts organisations;
• Secondly, just 30% of the Fun Palaces took place in London (which still gets two thirds of the Arts Council’s funds);
• Finally, the people involved belong to all social groups and backgrounds: makers and participants reflect the nation in terms of ethnicity, and 54% of them were in the more deprived half of the country.

If cultural policy and spending achieved anything close to such an equitable reach many things might be different in Britain today.

Trapped by thousand tiny ropes

It’s not from want of trying, of course. Arts and cultural institutions have been producing plans to increase ‘engagement’ and ‘participation’ for – literally – decades, with not much to show for it.  Arts Council England is now investing £37 million in Creative People and Places to get ‘more people choosing, creating and taking part in brilliant art experiences in the places where they live’. The initiative supports 21 partnerships of cultural and other organisations and is undoubtedly creating many fine new projects and activities. (I’ve even made one of those projects myself, in the Lincolnshire Fens.)

But it’s really hard to spend £37 million.You need plans and controls, relationship managers and auditors, advisors and committees and evaluators. You need expertise, knowledge and contacts. You need resources even to manage the resources. You have to take people with you.  You have to justify your decisions. Select committees and tabloid papers will tell you  (in their ignorance) where you’ve gone wrong. Before you’ve made the first grant still less put on an event, you’re bound with a thousand threads, like Gulliver on the beach of Lilliput. It’s nobody’s intention: it’s just what happens when you’re responsible for millions of other people’s money.      

Then it became a thing

But it is also the antithesis of Fun Palaces, which are fuelled by enthusiasm, gifts and volunteering. The campaign itself has received about £100,000 a year since 2014 – perhaps 1% of the Creative People and Places fund. The funding brings some obligations, but the Fun Palaces team manage those without passing the burden on to the makers. It has also received a lot of help, including from the Albany in Deptford, which has provided a base and much free support. That has helped it stay small, informal and fleet of foot, placing the attention and control where it belongs – with the communities who make Fun Palaces.

Most of them happen without funding, though they get heaps of help from local people and groups. They are discovering how empowering it is – to others – when you ask for help. Not knowing, not being the person who has the solution, not having the resources: such weaknesses become strengths when they open doors, build partnership, create friendships. If ‘Yes!’ is the spirit of Fun Palaces, so is asking for help, sharing, improvising, problem solving…

And this is where Fun Palaces are most creative. Of course, activities on the day can be creative, but it is making the event itself from clothes pegs, old newspapers and neglected space that is the really creative act. Where arts organisations spend months preparing a banquet before opening the doors and persuading people it’s what they want, Fun Palaces announce the date and place of a picnic and ask everyone to bring what they can. That’s why each one is different. If you know what’s going happen, it’s not a Fun Palace.

A Fun Palace is not a fucking fete. People sometimes want it to be a fete. It’s not a fete. If it’s a fete it’s not a Fun Palace. It’s not about coming along and having a lovely time. It’s not audience development. It’s like when I was 15, and met someone from my working class background, my town, who was an actor, who told me I could do that too. It’s saying to everybody, “You can do this. You are allowed to make arts and make sciences.”

Freedom to make your own sense

Fun Palaces have become a movement so quickly because the people behind it have not tried to control it. They have only said what the idea is and given some principles to guide people who want to make a Fun Palace. They should be:

Free – Local  – Innovative – Transformative – Engaging

That’s enough to be getting on with, though the information provided to potential makers gives a few more helpful words:

Fun Palaces are also LIMITLESS. They are INSPIRING. They are about TAKING PART. And, ideally, they are EASY. We want you to ENJOY making your Fun Palace. And they are also, as far as possible, SUSTAINABLE

(And notice how clear that is: everything I’ve read on the Fun Palaces website, including the admirably readable evaluation report, speaks of a wish to communicate and to show that people who work in the arts (or sciences) are no different from anyone else.)

Crucially, every maker or group is encouraged to interpret those ideas as they wish. Everyone is invited and everyone is interested in what others has to share. The result might not look impressive from a distance but talk to someone who is involved – or take part yourself – and you see that its value is in doing and being, not watching or listening. It is a first step towards rethinking art, science and creativity, what those things might be and how you relate to them. If you never do anything else again, it will be a pity, but never mind: you won’t think about art and science quite the same way either.

The difficult freedom of neglect

In 1962 Joan Littlewood tried to explain the Fun Palace idea to ‘the absurd Arts Council‘ who replied that she would not get support because ‘they were interested  in something which did not interest Miss Littlewood – Art.’  The Theatre Workshop Archive records that she replied ‘They are quite right!‘. But she might also have gone on to say that ‘Miss Littlewood is interested in something that does not interest the Arts Council – People.’

I’m not surprised that Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price couldn’t make The  Fun Palace in 1961. I’m saddened that The Public got so close, only to fall at the end; but not surprised. It’s what happens when you depend on other people’s money. They want to say how it will be spent and – because they have the money – they always think they know what you should do with it. If Littlewood had built a Fun Palace, she’d have lost control of it in days. She would have refused to do as she was told and stormed off. The building would have become just one more arts centre trying to meet its funders’ expectations. Luckily, it never happened so  she made temporary Fun Palaces instead – Bubble City  in 1968 and Stratford Fair  in 1975. In the difficult freedom of neglect she tried things whose influence continues decades after most well-funded theatre productions have been forgotten.

One way of thinking about Joan Littlewood’s story – and it’s only one: hers was a complex story – is to be glad that the Arts Council didn’t get her. Difficult as her artistic journey was, it’s hard to believe it would have been improved by their support. The truth is that we are most free when power is not interested in us. Perhaps community art has flourished – and it really has, despite its difficulties – in the past 50 years because it has never been smothered by the institutional embrace of the art world. Instead, it has won the support and affection of people, by working with them, involving them and empowering them.

It’s hard to work without resources and without the respect of people you think of as peers. But it’s harder still to have your creativity directed, your choices limited and your work colonised. Art is too precious to be kept from people – and what they make of it when they have the chance is more precious than power understands.

‘I do think that art has to reach others. What I hope for is that they are encouraged to create through art rather than to go “I could never achieve that, so I won’t try,” which I think is really painful and really damaging. If everyone was trying, we would have fixed the world by now. If we were educating everybody, we would have cures for all of our diseases.’

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Resources

• All quotes are taken from an interview with Stella Duffy conducted earlier this year.
• Fun Palaces Evaluation 2015 (7MB PDF)
• A blog post about Gloucester Fun Palace