On playgrounds and the archive. Joan Littlewood's Stratford Fair, 1967-1975

Joan Littlewood’s Stratford Fair, a late manifestation of her Fun Palace idea, aimed – through community-led and temporary playgrounds – to reclaim public land compromised by local government slum clearance in East London. Scholarship to date has discussed the Fair as a trigger for the political imagination of local youth, but not the central role that media played in the constitution of its public agenda. This article explores the archive as an active site of representation of the Fair. Recorded and circulated through monthly diaries, the Fair’s events generated affects that fostered attachment and identity, while its distributed media archive maintains a latent regenerative potential and invites plural historiography.