The Family Arts Festival began in 2013 and included over 4500 events by 900 organisations, entertaining around 650 000 family members across the UK. This scale and reach was matched in 2014, with another incredibly successful festival; read more in the post-Festival press release here.
Leading figures from the arts including Lord Lloyd Webber, Zoë Wanamaker and Ed Vaizey all expressed their support for the festival in its first year, and in 2014 best-selling author Michael Morpurgo joined the festival as its patron.
The Family Arts Festival has had successful partnerships with Centre Parcs, Netmums, Primary Times, Mumsnet, and The Mirror. It received press coverage across the country – a full list of press coverage of the 2013 festival can be found here.
Catherine Rose’s Office evaluated the festival within their Family Arts Campaign report, available here.
Family Arts Festival Awards
Many of the organisations who took part in the Family Arts Festival were already doing fantastic work when it came to encouraging families to engage in the arts – and we wanted to recognise this! The Family Arts Festival Awards are designed to recognise events, venues and organisations in the Festival which have provided a great family experience. They were voted for via the Family Arts Festival website, and are based on voting by the public only.
2014 award winners can be found here.
2013 award winners were:
Best Family Venue
Oldham Coliseum
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham
Northern Ballet
Shakespeare’s Globe
Stratford Circus
Best Family Event
Oldham Coliseum – My Friend Nigel
Northern Ballet – Three Little Pigs
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham – Theatre Royal Family Open Day
Nuffield Theatre – Stick Man
Globe Education, Shakespeare’s Globe – Muse of Fire
Best Overall Family Welcome
Oldham Coliseum
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham
Northern Ballet
Shakespeare’s Globe
Middleton Cheney Library
