Little Fun Palace

Little Fun Palace is a parasite project, presented together with OHT’s shows or without them, is an ever-changing place for encounters, talks, balls, gigs and any other form of possible spontaneity. This is a project focusing on the moment right after the cultural activity; the moment in which ideas, words and people’s encounters require space to happen. Little Fun Palace tackles a contemporary void exhuming the raison d'être of public areas; that one of being an open forum for spontaneous encounters.

Little Fun Palace brings together artists, philosophers, economists, scientists, engineers, musicians, architects, sociologists, writers, meteorologists, and so on that will dialogue on urgent and appropriate themes outlined by an Advisory Team and the institution guesting the Little Fun Palace. Little Fun Palace explores every aspects of realty in its diverse areas and shapes. This is a seriously spontaneous survey releasing intelligence from any cirrus of intellectualism.

Fun Palace
Designed as a flexible framework into which programmable spaces can be plugged, the structure has as its ultimate goal the possibility of change at the behest of its users. Price belonged to a generation of British architects and educators who used architecture both to address the future and as the ultimate social art. Price's personal vision of the city was inventive and playful and expressed his sense of architecture’s moral obligations toward its users. Cedric Price came on to the British architectural scene in the late 1950s, a time in which housing complexes, schools, industrial parks and new towns were springing up all over Britain. There was an overriding belief in a socially responsibly architecture and general feeling of optimism about the future and architecture's capacity to improve the environment. Price, however, was determined that his work would not impose physical or psychological constraints upon its occupants nor reduce them to standards, as did modernist architecture. Through the pairing of humour and playfulness with complete conviction, Price's projects all attest to his belief in an architecture that provides inhabitants as well as viewers individual freedoms.

Joan Maud Littlewood
(6 October 1914 – 20 September 2002) was an English theatre director, who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and is best known for her work in developing the Theatre Workshop. She has been called "The Mother of Modern Theatre". Her production of Oh, What a Lovely War! in 1963 was one of her most influential pieces. Littlewood and her company lived and slept in the Theatre Royal while it was restored. Productions of The Alchemist and Richard II, the latter starring Harry H. Corbett in the title role, established the reputation of the company. She also conceived and developed the concept of the Fun Palace in collaboration with architect Cedric Price, an experimental model of a participatory social environment that, although never realized, has become an important influence in the architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Miss Littlewood, a new musical written about Littlewood by Sam Kenyon, will be performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2018. [Wikipedia entry]

A few participants between May 2018 and July 2026:
Festival Periferico, Francesco Careri, Short Theatre Festival, BAD PEACE, Riccardo Giacconi, Matteo Nucci, JING, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Valentina Valentini, Daria Deflorian, Amedeo Balbi, Gaia Tedone, Al Reinert, Sophia Al-Maria, Donatella Della Ratta, Giulia Crispiani, Terni Festival, Silvia Costa, Associazione Ternana Astrofili, Allora and Calzadilla, museo MAXXI, Anri Sala, Vanessa Roghi, Emilia Giorgi, Gianni Rodari, Populous, Teatro Biblioteca Quarticciolo, Italo Calvino, Annamaria Ajmone, Jacopo Jenna, Paola Stella Minni, Ilenia Caleo, Annalisa Sacchi, Fiamma Mozzetta, Valerio Mattioli, Alfredo Jaar, Sara Leghissa, Lucia Gallone, Roberto Boccaccino, Festival Fabbrica Europa, Muta Imago / Riccardo Fazi, Sotterraneo, Engaged Academics EUI (Caterina F. Guidi, Mario Pagano, Giovanna Gilleri), Lana Live Festival, Frida Carazzato, Anne Palopoli, Jim Jarmusch, ÖGFA_Next Up / Architekturtage, Latitude Contemporaines Festival, Parasite 2.0, Barbara Visser, La Ribot, Osvaldo Festival, sezione didattica museo MART, Centrale Fies art work space, bruno, Riccardo Falcinelli, Emanuele Coccia, dj Ubi Broki, Maria Luisa Frisa