Festival season is approaching! The word festival might conjure up a picture of one big party in the desert, but maybe this year you’d like to focus on making your festival family-friendly. In order to do this, you have to get a little creative. Here are some of our best tips for creating an event everyone from every stage of life can enjoy.

There are different levels of ‘family-friendly.’ You’ll first need to determine what level you want your event to be at. For example, do you want to plan completely separate events for the kids or do you want to just add kid-friendly components to typical festival fare? Whatever the case may be, make sure to include the level of kid-friendliness is clearly stated on all promotional flyers and social media posts so parents can make an informed decision on whether their kid’s ages and interests will be appropriate for your event.

Pick A Nice Theme

If you’re going to have essentially two different activities- some for the kids, some for the adults, at least pick a fun family-friendly theme that can be applied to all activities so the festival feels cohesive. They can be general and simple like Love Yourself or Nature Is Our Friend. This way you can create activities that play along with the theme for both the adults and the children.

Performers Make It Easy

Can’t think of great kid’s activities for your festival? An easy way out is to schedule interesting performers that both kids and adults will enjoy! For example, WOMAD, a family-friendly festival in England, hire Mongolian throat singers to perform every year. That will surely get your kids attention!

Learning Is Fun!

Whether they admit it or not, kids enjoy learning new things and especially putting those new found skills to use. Make this happen at your festival by setting up a interactive lesson for the kids. Dancing or painting are good choices that work for lots of age groups. To make it even more intriguing, you could schedule a kid’s group to come to the festival to perform the same skill for the guests.

Family Foods

Remember that kids tend to have a more basic food palette so providing kid-friendly options will gain you a few points in the parents’ books.

Most Importantly

At the very least, make sure your event is a safe place for kids to hang while parents meet and mingle. You’d be surprised how many kids are self-entertaining when they feel comfortable!

Make sure to advertise any kid-friendly elements your festival will have in your marketing material. This way parents will be drawn to your event and you can ensure that there will actually be kids there to benefit from your planning. If you need help planning your family-friendly festival, contact us at Strategic Event Design.