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Witness History

Dismaland: Banksy's dystopian theme park

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.51.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2015, Banksy turned a derelict swimming pool in Weston-super-Mare, England, into a dystopian theme park which drew huge crowds and Hollywood stars.

Working under cover of darkness, the street artist created Dismaland - a 'bemusement park' offering a satirical twist on mainstream resorts.

The temporary exhibition featured a fire-ravaged castle, a riot police van sinking into a lake, and Cinderella’s upturned pumpkin carriage.

Open for just five weeks, Dismaland sold thousands of tickets daily and injected an estimated £20 million into the local economy.

Kurtis Young speaks to Reena Stanton-Sharma about his summer job as a steward at Dismaland.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.

For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue.

We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher.

You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: A mermaid sculpture in front of the fairy castle. Credit: Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:07.0

My Christmas Mix is pure 90s festive nostalgia.

0:11.1

You know, the Christmas songs you listen to on repeat.

0:14.0

Oh, ho!

0:15.7

No, no, no.

0:17.5

I'm all about the big hitting Christmas anthems.

0:20.4

Come on, guys. What about those tunes that really slay? It's Christmas kitchen disco season, surely.

0:26.4

Give me hip-hip-christmas bangers every day. Those Christmas tracks that are straight out of lapland.

0:30.9

Get all kinds of Christmassy. Just search Christmas music on BBC Sounds.

0:39.8

Hi, welcome to witness history. I'm Rina Stanton Sharma. I'm going to tell you about the

0:45.9

elusive street artist Banksy. But if you're new to this podcast, for nine minutes every weekday,

0:52.1

we take you to a moment in history through the eyes of a witness.

0:57.1

If that sounds like your thing, hit subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:03.3

For today's story, I'm taking you back 10 years to August 2015,

1:08.5

when one of the most famous artists in the world

1:11.3

transformed a derelict outdoor swimming pool into what was billed

1:15.8

as the UK's most disappointing visitor attraction.

1:19.5

Welcome to Dismoreland. Enjoy.

1:23.3

Please have that bit of the ticket ready to be scanned.

1:26.1

Every day, 4,000 came with tickets booked online.

1:30.0

500 more queued in all weathers for walk-up admission.

1:34.2

A lady last week flew in from Japan.

...

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