The Alternative UK Podcast

The Alternative UK Podcast 2: Stella Duffy on the power of a Fun Palace

Welcome to The Alternative UK Podcast - an occasional conversation with key thinkers for a better future. Today’s guest is Stella Duffy, [https://stelladuffy.wordpress.com]founder of the Fun Palaces [http://funpalaces.co.uk] movement. As her blurb says: Fun Palaces is an ongoing campaign for cultural democracy, with an annual weekend of action every October. The campaign promotes culture at the heart of community and community at the heart of culture. The weekend of action uses the combination of arts, craft, science, tech, digital, heritage and sports activities, led by local people for local people, sharing their own passions and skills, as a catalyst for community-led transformation, with active participation for all ages. Our workshops [http://funpalaces.co.uk/about/fun-palaces-workshops/] and our Ambassadors Programme [http://funpalaces.co.uk/about/fun-palace-ambassadors/] support our work with communities; developing local networks, enabling links between individuals and organisations, encouraging large venues to co-create with local people, and small groups to shout about their value as grassroots community activists. Stella's credentials for unleashing creativity in others are impressive. She has worked in theatre for 35 years as a actor, director, playwright, improviser, deviser and workshop leader. She is an award-winning writer with over sixty short stories, eleven plays (written and devised), and fifteen novels published in sixteen languages. A/UK organiser Maria Dorthea Skov - herself researching the political power of leisure in contemporary society - interviews Stella about the empowering possibilities of Fun Palaces.

The Alternative UK Podcast 1: Hilary Cottam's Radical Help

Welcome to The Alternative UK Podcast - an occasional conversation with key thinkers for a better future. The Alternative UK is a new political platform that exists to answer the question: if politics is broken what’s the Alternative? Today’s guest is social entrepreneur Hilary Cottam, who uses a design approach to solving the world’s problems – and as such, was named Designer of the Year in 2005 for her work in schools, health services and prisons. For the past ten years Hilary has been working with her team at Participle, to re-imagine social services as relational welfare. This is an approach which puts relationship, rather than management, at the heart of interractions between vulnerable people and the state. Today we are celebrating the publication of Hilary’s new book Radical Help. It documents the incredible success she has had in turning people’s lives around using this idea of relational welfare. Alternative UK's co-initiator Indra Adnan interviewed Hilary in her office in Peckham, London.