Fantastic For Families Awards 2025 Shortlist
The Winners of the Fantastic For Families Awards 2025 have now been announced.
Congratulations to:
The Hepworth Wakefield
Barnsley Libraries
DMS Productions
The Herd Theatre
Ascendance
Meet the 2025 finalists — artists and organisations redefining what creative engagement means for families and older people.
Each year, the Awards celebrate the organisations, partnerships, and practitioners who connect families and older audiences with the arts; through community performances, festivals, outreach projects, and a wide range of imaginative activities.
Keep reading to discover all 26 inspiring stories of Family Arts engagement.
You can also find more family and age-friendly organisations near you in the Fantastic for Families Directory.
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Discover 26 inspiring stories
from across the UK
Best Family Arts Activity Shortlist
This award celebrates creative activities and events that have been developed for families.
Arts Trust Productions
✨ Summer in the Park
📍 Greenwich
A joyful cross-generational festival in local parks, where families of all ages come together for free music, dance, skate jams, and creative workshops co-designed with the community.
Unfolding
Theatre
✨ Here Be Dragons
📍 South Tyneside & Sunderland
A bold, magical family theatre adventure where children and families co-create dragons, stories, and performances, bringing bravery, imagination, and cultural celebration to life on stage.
Modus
Arts
✨ SoundHoppers
📍 Mossley
An imaginative workshop for children, using playful sound exploration, attentive listening games, and bespoke tools to explore and appreciate our environment sonically.
Cap-a-Pie
✨ Marvellous Microbes
📍 Newcastle & County Durham
A hands-on adventure where uncovering the secret lives of microbes through storytelling, music, and creative play, brings science and sustainability to life in unforgettable ways.
Junction Goole
✨ Takeover Festival
📍 Goole
A two-day family festival in Goole, curated by primary school pupils as Young Producers, who programmed inclusive performances, workshops, and activities for their community.
Barnsley Libraries
✨ The Story Shell
📍 Barnsley
A six-metre-high inflatable storytelling space co-created with local young people, where families explore magical worlds through interactive stories, workshops, and performances.
The Hepworth Wakefield
✨ Surreal Landscapes Family Programme
📍 Wakefield
An imaginative programme where children and families curated a surrealist exhibition, designing trails, workshops, and hands-on gallery experiences to bring art to life.
Intergenerational Music Making
✨ Family & Early Years Hubs Programme
📍 Across Surrey
A hands-on music programme where families explored creative activities, celebrated cultural traditions, and strengthened bonds through playful, interactive sessions.
Taking Flight Theatre Company
✨ Mae Gen Ti Ddreigiau/You’ve Got Dragons
📍 Wales
An inclusive performance where families explored anxiety and wellbeing through music, storytelling, and dragon-themed workshops, touring with a trilingual Welsh/English/BSL offer.
DMS
Productions
✨ The Mystery of… Show
📍Cranleigh
An interactive board-game-style theatre production for families, where audiences become detectives solving ever-changing mysteries through play, problem-solving and curiosity.
Bamboozle
Theatre
✨ The Backyard Wilding Sessions
📍 Leicester
Creative, family-friendly sessions where each visit offers new, playful ways to explore nature, imagination, and sensory play together in a calm, child-led garden setting.
Pontefract Castle
Autograph
✨ Heritage for Youth
📍 Pontefract
A hands-on heritage programme co-designed with teenagers, where young people explored medieval crafts, baking, and an escape room in Pontefract Castle’s historic spaces.
Best Age-Friendly Outreach Shortlist
This category recognises age-friendly activities, events, projects and support for older people.
Ascendance
✨ Signature Moves
📍 Leeds
A programme empowering artists aged 60+ to create, teach, and lead, while challenging ageism and showcasing their professional choreographic and creative potential.
Goofus Theatre
✨ Intergenerational Reach Magic
📍 Wigan
An intergenerational project bringing together young children and older adults, including those living with dementia, to share non-verbal theatre and creative play.
Arts Outburst
✨ Thurrock Voices
📍 Essex
A joyful community choir where older adults come together to sing familiar songs and build connections in a relaxed, welcoming space that nurtures confidence and wellbeing.
Women Over Fifty Film Festival
✨ WOFFF x Virgin Atlantic Dementia Friendly Cinema
📍 International
A collaboration creating the world’s first dementia-friendly inflight film collection, offering soothing, visually engaging short films that make air travel calmer and more inclusive for older passengers and their families.
The Octagon Theatre
✨ Parkinson’s Dance
📍 Yeovil
An uplifting, evidence-based dance programme for older adults with Parkinson’s disease, combining creative movement, music, and science to enhance mobility, confidence, wellbeing, and social connection in a supportive, welcoming environment.
City of Doncaster Council
✨ Culture Nature: Danum Community Garden
📍 Doncaster
A vibrant community garden project bringing generations together through creativity and nature, where older people lead, connect, and share skills while transforming an outdoor space into a colourful, welcoming hub.
Akademi
✨ Dance Well
📍 London
An inclusive, creative dance programme using South Asian movement and music to enhance physical health, wellbeing, and social connection for older adults, offering an enjoyable, accessible alternative to traditional exercise and celebrating cultural engagement and community.
Audience Impact & Innovation Award Shortlist
This award recognises the achievements of creative organisations or cultural event organisers who have demonstrated innovation and adaptability to reach and make a difference to families in need.
Oily Cart
✨ When the World Turns – Flexible Programme
📍 London
An immersive, sensory theatre experience inspired by families of disabled children, blending sound, light, scent, and nature to make theatre accessible for all, offering three inclusive formats for families to explore and enjoy at their own pace.
Theatre Porto
✨ Theatre of Sanctuary
Programme
📍 Ellesmere Port
An inclusive, evolving programme offering creative, food-based, and non-verbal theatre experiences for families seeking sanctuary, fostering trust, belonging, and joy, and earning recognition as the UK’s first children’s Theatre of Sanctuary.
Norwich Theatre
✨ Cultural Music
Celebrations
📍 Norwich
A collaborative, co-designed programme where sanctuary-seeking families and children in Norwich and Norfolk celebrated culture, music, and community, creating safe, joyful, intergenerational experiences that foster trust, connection, and wellbeing.
The
Herd
✨ Counting Sheeps
📍 Hull
A musical, sensory theatre adventure for 0–3-year-olds and their carers, bringing regular, hyper-local early-years performances to Hull, co-created with families to foster connection, play, and engagement in areas with limited arts provision.
Starcatchers Productions
✨ CashBack for Young Parents
📍 Edinburgh
A supportive, creative programme for parents under 25 and their babies, CashBack for Young Parents offers bespoke play, arts, and wellbeing sessions that build confidence, connection, and peer networks while reducing isolation in underserved communities.
Theatre
Hullabaloo
✨ Place to Play
📍 Darlington
A family-centred programme offering free, creative play for under-5s in South Tees, using artist-designed sensory playscapes to support development, wellbeing, and school readiness, co-created with local families to ensure inclusive, community-rooted experiences.
National Maritime Museum x Seaglass Collective
✨ Message in a Bottle
📍 London/ Yorkshire
A creative exchange uniting foster and adoptive families through collaborative textile art, fostering connection, confidence, and joy across London and Yorkshire, demonstrating the power of trauma-informed, creative practice to build belonging and wellbeing.
Directory
Fantastic for Families
From festivals and theatre companies to galleries and museums, in our directory you’ll find 1000+ organisations bringing eye-boggling creative events, activities and initiatives to life across the UK.
Sector Support
Family Arts Campaign
Work in the arts industry? Find out more about our work to support you. Dive into our resources library, commit to the Family Arts Standards or create a Family Arts Network in your area.
Video credits:
Awards Shortlist Films by Holm Films, BSL by Sign Solutions.
Image credits:
Header: Junction Goole, Takeover Festival.
Banner 1: Barnsley Libraries, The Story Shell.
Banner 2: The Herd, Counting Sheeps. Photography by Wild Child Photography.
Please click through to individual pages to see any image credits