For those with kids coming to Kelburn Garden Party you can expect a music festival and adventure holiday rolled into one. Instead of a simple kid-safe zone that is the norm of many-a-festival across the UK, we are utterly proudly bursting with a whole spectacle of family-friendly fun throughout the weekend.
Kelburn estate is an award-winning family attraction, and festival goers get access to most of those features on top of all the extra magic we lay on for the weekend. Drive a bus, discover the Green Man’s Maze, see a comedy show, join a drum circle, learn fantastic circus tricks, tackle the rope bridge… there is even a soft play barn!
Read on for a cheeky taster of the activities and acts you and your family can catch at Kelburn.
Kids under 5 go free to the festival, and kids and youth tickets are heavily subsidised.
We also have a new quiet and family camping field and some upmarket toilet and shower facilities for those who like a bit more comfort.
The Secret Forest Project
One of the gems in Kelburn’s crown and open from 10am to 5pm daily, the Secret Forest is a surreal labyrinthine trail through the woods above the main festival site, that includes many bizarre attractions, from the Chinese gardens and Pagoda, the gingerbread house and the Greenman’s maze, to the crocodile swamp and grotto and the “inner wood”.
And exclusively for Kelburn Garden Party, you can catch the The Bug Beauty Bonanza. Join Doctor Remy as they search the Secret Forest for the classiest creepy-crawly of the year. Will it be the dancing Bees? The mighty Atlas Beetle, or perhaps the sinister Spider? You decide!
The Famous BlundaBus
The famous Fringe venue is back! Bob’s BlundaBus (a double decker that’s also a pop-up comedy venue) will host kids’ events this year during the day at the Kelburn Garden Party.
The Lullabies Collective
Families will find a warm welcome at the Lullabies Collective. A focal point of the family camping field, their programme puts some familiarity and rhythm into the day for younger festival goers while giving parents some down time too. Start the day with a Sing Along, enjoy a bubbly Baby bath after dinner, and finish off the day with the festival bedtime of your life – songs and stories from the Lullabies Collective!
The Lullabies Collective are artists and musicians with children of their own who love festivals and produce collaborative performing arts for children. Together they create the Lullabies Tent, an amazing sheltered environment for parents, babies and young children. Bath the kids and enjoy original songs and stories, traditional and modern lullabies, entrancing visuals, and soothing live music.
The BarrowBand
The BarrowBand sing songs about vegetables and fruit
They are accompanied at all performances by their colourful kinetic market barrow featuring amongst others swaying oranges, singing kiwis, dancing broccoli, line dancing carrots and partying mushrooms plus the occasional animal and of course flying bananas!!
The band’s collective of musicians, performers and artists, create a performance that is unsparingly musical, eclectic in style, energetic, educational, funny and surprising. The band are multi generational in age and appeal to fans of all ages.
Feel the irresistible power of Cauliflower and win something from our barrow!
“By far the best folk/skiffle eat your greens market stall outfit you’ll see anywhere this year..” – The Children’s Media Conference
Born to Rewild
Join Colonel John McMustard, Colin Hunter and Roddy Dickson for some family-friendly gig theatre with climate change and rewilding at its heart.
Born To Rewild is moving gig theatre, walking through trees and embracing the nature around with a mixture of storytelling, games, bad jokes and good songs, teaching valuable lessons about climate change and what we can do to help.
Catch the mini gig at the end, where the three wolves and their pack sing wolfish classics like “Back To The Wild”, “Thank You Beaver”, “Freedom For The Children”, “Born To Rewild” and “Wild Thing”.
Unicorn Dance Party
You are invited to the best dance party ever!
Sparkling unicorns Melody and Luna are looking for new pals, and they’ve heard there are some unicorns in your area. So, they’re throwing the best dance party ever, with easy-to-follow dance moves and the ultimate playlist of everyone’s favourite tunes, from Katy Perry to Queen! You are invited to clap your hands, shake your tails and move and groove to some rockin’ jams!
With glittering costumes and visual pizazz, this interactive outdoor show for aspiring unicorns aged 5+ and their families will unlock the joy within us all.
Now, let’s just hope the unicorns they’re looking for turn up!
Epic Story Quest
The Epic Story Quest is an improvised story adventure where the audience chooses what happens next.
Your ideas are woven into the most amazing, exciting, jaw-dropping story imaginable by Desmond O’Connor and Zoie Kennedy, master-storytellers and passionate musicians.
Zoie and Des will be assisted in their storytelling and soundtracking by a group of children who have embarked upon the Epic Story Workshop. These children will spend an hour working with Des and Zoie, learning how to create sound effects, generate musical accompaniment and even lead the storytelling themselves.
The children of Kelburn Garden Party will be given a creative opportunity that will transform their festival experience and give them all the chance to say they have performed live in the Neverending Glen at Scotland’s most beautiful music festival.
The Fairy Garden
The Fairy Garden uses a collection of natural and upcycled materials to create a small world experience that can be shaped by the participants, building a garden for fairies that they can use for engaging in imaginary play.
We will begin with the creation of the fairy stage, where your kids will get to create their own peg fairy divas to appear in a performance fit for Kelburn Garden Party. This play allows children to experience how their innovative use of materials, kind and gentle behaviour and empathetic practice can create the ideal world for our fairies to exist.
Rowanbank Arts
Rowanbank Environmental Arts & Education is an Edinburgh based social enterprise that creates magical family-friendly events, workshops and performances that inspire and delight audiences throughout the UK and beyond.
From shows in urban woodlands and remote beaches to climate change workshops in schools, our forest circus performers twirl from the branches of giant trees and work creatively with the natural and built environment to produce site specific performances. We engage people in an imaginative and inclusive way, inspiring wonder in the natural world.
Join us on Friday afternoon at 2pm for a magical woodland walk and a fantastical summer celebration tea party!
Duck Race
Come to the river, grab a duck and join in the fun. Our duck racers will have you whipped up into an exciting frenzy watching your duck float down the river in the race to find out who is the quickest quacker in the Kel Burn.
Spinning Jenny’s
Stand tall on stilts, wobble wildly on a unicycle, teeter, totter and spin!
Roll up, roll up! Come and join the circus shenanigans to learn a new skill (or show off an old one) with spinning plates, giant hoola hoops, juggling, stilt walking and more…
Hula Hoop Making
Custom-make your very own beautiful hula hoop with reclaimed piping.
Then learn some basic hula hoop skills to get you ready to throw some shapes on the festival floor!
This is a 2-hour workshop. The first hour will be dedicated to making our hula hoops. The second hour will be spent practicing and skill-sharing basic hooping skills.
All are very welcome – but children under 12 must be supervised by an adult because we will be using sharp tools.
Sun Catchers Workshop
Using recycled beads and bought crystals, sun catchers can be hung in people’s windows to create rainbows on their walls when the sun shines through them.
Sun catchers are small enough to fit in your pockets and a quality creation to take away and remember Kelburn.They are durable and will last forever.
Equally suitable for both kids and adults.
Workshops & Games
Throughout the festival site you will find a great range of activities for your little ones. From a nail-biting duck race and the family hub in the Tall Trees to a Unicorn Dance Party and nature walks with Rowanbank Arts, you can give them a proper mind-enhancing time by day before you do your best to live it up by night!
More to be announced soon…
