Welcome to Dismaland, home of irony

Yesterday, after we had spent three hours in Banksy's Dismaland, my wife described it as "a nice day out". Her remark might be considered trite, but it was totally in keeping with the sense of irony that pervaded every brick of this unique institution.

Inside the walls of this former art deco lido which used to go under the not unironic name of The Tropicana, the "fun" begins as soon as you pay the £3 fee for entry. Carefully trained staff adopt a permanently dismal expression as they guide you in. And once inside you will find all the usual attractions of a funfair: Ferris Wheel, obviously bent shooting galleries, even a paddling pool where, for £1 you can guide miniature boats full of beautifully crafted migrants round and round in circles, running over others who are already in the water. What fun! Further inside an armoured police van with water-cannon fountain languishes in a pool, while over there is a bell-tent housing a collection of radical banners going back nearly a century of activism. Then there is a gallery housing examples of subversive art from some of the world's leading artists, including a novel creation by Damien Hurst, where a large beach ball hovers precariously over a base where a hundred vicious knives point upwards, waiting to burst it. Finally, at the far end of the site is the "library", featuring what was for me the focal point of the whole exposition, a copy of The ABC of Communist Anarchism, by the Russian/American activist Alexander Berkman, whose works are virtually sacred tests for anarchists the world over. In these hallowed pages you will find his demands for individual freedom and responsibility, plus the assertion that when free individuals come together in mutual consent there is almost nothing they cannot achieve.

This is the beating heart of Dismaland; it is what provides the reason underlying all of Banksy's work, and the people present seemed to recognise this instinctively. The demographic was mainly middle class/liberal, but there was none of the posing and commercialism that has marred Glastonbury in recent years, now the corporate dollar has taken over, and we can find Alexa Chung wandering around the fields in £800 designer boots. Here people are much more knowing, ready to take on board the tenets of anarchism, because we can now see, with the spasms of the refugee crisis swirling around Europe, the horrible shit the capitalist system has landed us in.

I urge any follower of this blog to beg, borrow, steal, or simply do as we did and queue up on the day and have a grand day out at one of the most amazing spectacles this correspondent has ever witnessed.