This is a guest post by Dr Matt Finch. In this post he invites #citylis students to participate as volunteers lending a hand or contributing to Lambeth Council’s 2015 Fun Palaces.
Fun Palaces: Pushing the Limits. Click on the image to download a PDF.
This year, on Saturday 3rd October 2015, I’ll be helping Lambeth Council to run 10 Fun Palaces in public libraries across their borough.
Fun Palaces are community venues which invite members of the public to try their hand at a range of arts and sciences. Last year saw Fun Palaces pop up everywhere from the Royal Shakespeare Company to a Canadian radio station – not to mention a number of public libraries around the world.
You can see Fun Palaces in action here: https://vimeo.com/
Lambeth are now looking for volunteers to lend a hand or contribute to their 2015 Fun Palaces. It’s a great opportunity for #citylis students, whatever setting they work in, to see what this kind of live community engagement looks like for libraries. If you’ve been intrigued by talk of play-based learning, community outreach, or letting your library users create and direct activities, this is a chance to try it out at first hand.
There will be a Lambeth Libraries Fun Palaces training session at Brixton Tate Library from 10am-12noon on Monday 20th July. There you’ll be able to meet library staff and partners from across the arts and a range of community organisations, plus hear from Fun Palaces co-director, the acclaimed playwright, novelist, and performer Stella Duffy. That meeting will be the launchpad for local libraries to create their own Fun Palaces this October.
If you’d like to volunteer some of your time later this year, gain some valuable experience in library community engagement, and participate in some Fun Palaces training, please contact me (Matt Finch) via the form at http://matthewfinch.me/
I think it would be a huge opportunity for #citylis folk to try their hand at something different in terms of public outreach and both the workshop & the Fun Palaces themselves would provide lots of useful experience.
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Matt Finch is on Twitter @DrMattFinch. His website is at http://matthewfinch.me/. Fun Palaces are on Twitter @FunPalaces.
