Community arts should not be segregated from ‘real’ art

Last week, the Bridge Theatre’s director, Nick Hytner, set our social feeds chattering by sharing how he would 'save the arts’ by keeping Arts Council England for “the best possible art by professional artists” and create a new body for “community-based initiatives … outreach and education programmes”. 

This is definitely progress for “community-based initiatives” and company. Ten years ago, when Fun Palaces was founded, funding us at all was constantly in question. Now even the most establishment of figures just wants to segregate real art from what the rest of us are up to. 

A lot has changed in the last decade, and even more since 1961 when Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price first imagined a Fun Palace. They were working in a bomb-scarred East London, where the sixties were not yet swinging and the people who their theatre served were no more likely to go 'up west’ to the theatres and museums in Central London than they were to go to the moon. 

The mother of modern theatre

Joan Littlewood’s theatre made radical work, and no idea was more radical than the Fun Palace. A place with space for the genius in everyone? What, really everyone? Joan’s Fun Palace was never built – the Arts Council wouldn’t fund it – but some five decades later, in 2013, Stella Duffy happened upon the Fun Palace as a suitable way to celebrate Joan Littlewood’s centenary. 

She made it an open invitation (nobody fancied a capital project!): anyone who wants to – make your Fun Palace. Make a place, for an hour, a day, a weekend, where everyone is an artist, everyone a scientist. Learn how to build an Eiffel tower of paperclips from your neighbour! Dance on the green! Take over the museum! 

And her invitation was taken up 138 times over, in that first year (the Arts Council did fund that) and 2,410 times since. Stella had no idea at the time that she was launching a movement that over 10 years would see power begin shifting from the cultural ivory towers out to communities.

Not just ticking the ‘community’ box

There was something in the air in 2013. The Warwick Commission had made its initial report on how few people get any benefit from the majority of cultural funding. And fellow everyday creativity movement 64 Million Artists was founded too. Lots of tiny changes were building up. 

It was uphill to start with. Many of the people making Fun Palaces in those first years were rebuffed by the very organisations who would come back to them a few years later, keen to tick the 'community’ box funders were now looking for. 

And it’s uphill now: it’s been a tough decade. Austerity has squeezed arts funding well beyond the squeak, local authorities are on the brink of bankruptcy, Brexit has divided us, everyone has had to redefine how they live thanks to the pandemic, and the cost-of-living crisis is finishing off anyone still standing. 

And yet, throughout that, over 45,000 people have said: '”Yes – I’m going to be part of Fun Palaces. I have skills to share, I have knowledge and yes – culture belongs to me!” 

And funding bodies have come along for the ride too. Calouste Gulbenkian’s inquiry into the civic role of arts organisations continues to highlight and support the incredible things that can happen when arts organisations really do serve their communities. Likewise, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation are supporting Creative, Confident Communities, and Local Trust have been Creating Civic Change, among many illustrious others. Arts Council England’s Let’s Create strategy could not chime more with what we stand for.

Iroko Djembe Workshop, Manor Park Library, FunPalace Newham 2022. Photo: Renoir Saulter

Why are we not an NPO?

We often get asked why we’re not a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) as part of Let’s Create. The fact is we don’t have the ACE funding track record. Pre-Let’s Create, we were practically unfundable – not enough "proper” artists. 

Despite the leap of faith in funding our first year – without which there would be no Fun Palaces and for which we are hugely grateful – and apart from a small workshop grant, our applications have been turned down. 

As a very small organisation, staffed by part-timers, we’ve trembled at the onerousness of the NPO application process. Instead, we are extremely lucky to be backed by a funder – the National Lottery Community Fund – that understands our work and has created the conditions for it to thrive.

Who gets to decide what’s real art?

The road is still long. If the last decade has taught us anything it’s that this isn't a separate part of work that can be hived off, however convenient that may seem to Nick Hytner. It’s central. Art (and heritage, science, and all the rest of the fuzzy edges in culture) is not an optional extra for communities. It’s crucial and it’s political. How can you respect people without respecting their creative ideas, interests, tastes? 

If you tell people the stuff they like is worthless, and the stuff they say and make and do is a waste of time, not the real thing, you are silencing them not just as artists, but as humans. If huge groups of people’s voices are never heard or reflected in the “best possible art”, how can it be the best possible? Who gets to decide that?

Communities know what they need and want, and in Fun Palaces sometimes little pockets of utopia come about. Venues realise they won’t fall down if they genuinely hand over control for a weekend. People find their voice and find they can use it for all sorts of things. 

In 2023, sometimes having fun at all feels pretty radical and Fun Palaces can become tiny Creative Riots, with people using their voices, their brilliance and even their radical joy to shout for what they need. So, let’s keep at it. Make a Fun Palace in 2023. Share your power as an arts professional. Hand something over. It could even be… fun.

(Oh, and happy 110th birthday, Joan!)

Kirsty Lothian is Co-Director and Amie Taylor is a producer at Fun Palaces.
@funpalaces | @kirstylothian1 | @AmieAmieTay