François Matarasso

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  • What next? It depends who’s asking

    When a campaign takes off as Fun Palaces has, people start asking ‘What Next?’. It’s the wrong question – or at least, to ask it is to misunderstand what’s important about Fun Palaces and why. Cultural policy in post-war Europe (how long will we keep calling it that?) has been divided between two big ideas: cultural democratisation and…

  • 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…

  • 3 – Nearly building a Fun Palace in West Bromwich

    ‘But what is it for?’ was a question often asked by funders. There has been at least one serious attempt to give physical reality to Joan Littlewood’s vision: The Public, in Sandwell. This huge, multi-disciplinary and interactive community arts centre was imagined by Jubilee Arts, who had been working in this part of the post-industrial…

  • 2 – A Fun Palace reimagined in Farnham

    Farnham is a handsome market town in Surrey, an ancient place with a castle, Roman roads and hill forts. It is 45 miles from Joan Littlewood’s East London, where she fought to build The Fun Palace, but it seems a world away. London changes continually – the Olympic Park has replaced the post-war wastelands where…

  • 1 – Failing to build The Fun Palace

    On 1 & 2 October 2016, almost 300 temporary Fun Palaces were created in Britain, Ireland, France, Norway, Australia and New Zealand, all inspired by the vision of Joan Littlewood. Since 2013, this movement has come from an idea by Stella Duffy, picked up by tens, then hundreds and now thousands of other people. Both the original vision and…

  • Participatory art is improvisation

    Everyone is interested in participation and community engagement these days. I don’t think there can ever have been so much work done in the field or such varied ideas and approaches. At the European Jazz Conference in Wroclaw (Poland) I’ve met inspiring people from Norway to Lisbon, all working hard to make the music they…