At the start of 2017 one of our favorite clients, the Fun Palaces team, released a report which detailed their growth and statistics for the past year.
We were thrilled to discover that with our help the Fun Palaces system, which is an Arts Council funded project that was built and is hosted and maintained by Make Do, grew to become a worldwide event.
In 2016 there were over 292 events in 9 nations over the past 12 months and over 124,000 people using the system across the globe.
Stand-out stats are:
The following points are taken from the report which you can download here (PDF format). The juicy stats are:
- Page 4:
- 85% of FPs in UK are OUTSIDE London
- Page 6:
- 59% of FPs happen in libraries (which is v much part of our interest in hyper-locality, supporting cultural engagement where people live rather than encouraging them to go to city centres)
- Page 7:
- Great diversity/inclusivity stats for Makers:
- 62% of Maker teams included people from an ethnic minority
- 27% of Maker teams included disabled people
- 34% of Maker teams included people under 18
- 30% of Maker teams included people over 65
- Great diversity/inclusivity stats for Makers:
- Page 12:
- Demographic stats:
- We again match the UK’s demographic in both participants (those who take part in a Fun Palace) and Makers (those who lead it locally) which is brilliant
- A few things we’ve built on since last year: we have more older, Asian, and disabled Makers
- A few where we can do better: a small drop in Black Makers and participants, and we’re still not doing great at attracting the LEAST deprived (though we are attracting the most deprived) Obviously we think that engagement – and giving to their local community – is also for the richest, not least because they have so much to give (!), so we do want to do better there too. And hopefully the PHF/Wellcome funded Ambassadors programme we’ve just started will help with all of this.
- Demographic stats:
What next for Fun Palaces?
Plans for 2017 are already afoot with a re-design and updates to the WordPress-powered platform being scheduled for the summer. The goal is that we can build on the advanced platform which we rolled out back in 2014 and utilise a more streamlined and simplified system which is expandable enough to be used by anyone in any language anywhere in the world.
Keep an eye out on funpalaces.co.uk for any updates!
