Events for Children and Young People

Get your Hay day off to a brilliant start with our daily Ready, Steady, Music workshops! With different activities each day, these interactive, fun-filled sessions for mini musicians and their grown-ups will have you tapping sticks, roaring like dinosaurs, flying with unicorns, dancing with scarves, playing with parachutes and so much more. Come and meet our puppets, explore our range of instruments and listen to the beautiful sound of the cello.

Captivating young imaginations and creating lasting memories, these sessions offer a unique musical adventure. The perfect way to boost wellbeing, increase confidence, spark creativity and introduce children to the joy of music.

Come and join Rooted Forest School for some outdoor family sessions offering natural creativity for everyone. We’ll use willow and natural materials to create a collaborative piece of nature art in the Family Garden. Dress for the weather and expect to get messy! These sessions will run whatever the weather, so make sure you’re wrapped up for the conditions.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative in these interactive sessions delivered by artists and discover that your imagination is the only limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven.

Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven.

Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

Where do you live? What does it look like? And why does your sense of home matter so much? Join Emma Barnett, BBC broadcaster and founder of nationwide colouring book company Colour Your Streets, along with her husband and co-founder Jeremy Weil, to draw and colour in places in your area that are important to you. All materials provided… just bring your imagination.

Come and join Rooted Forest School for some outdoor family sessions offering natural creativity for everyone. We’ll use willow and natural materials to create a collaborative piece of nature art in the Family Garden. Dress for the weather and expect to get messy! These sessions will run whatever the weather, so make sure you’re wrapped up for the conditions.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative in these interactive sessions delivered by artists and discover that your imagination is the only limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven.

Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

Join Liz Pichon, the bestselling and award-winning creator of Tom Gates, as she launches her new series, The Mubbles. Discover the Isle of Smile and find out what’s behind the uncertain curtain? There’ll be music, games and lots of doodling to do.

Pichon’s Tom Gates series has won the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story and the younger fiction category of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. In the twelve years since the series began, the Tom Gates books have inspired the nation’s children to get creative, whether through reading, drawing, doodling, writing, making, playing music or performing.

Please bring your own sketchbook and pencils to this event.

David Lindo, also known as the Urban Birder, is a writer, broadcaster, photographer and educator. Through his broad array of work, his goals are to inspire people to engage with birds in urban environments, and show how birding can be accessible to all. Join him in this exciting event to learn all about his work and his love of birding.

Lose yourself with Tahereh Mafi in her exhilarating return to the Shatter Me universe. Watch Me is the first book in a new series set ten years after the fall of The Reestablishment. Brimming with pulse-pounding action and torturous romance, it’s an explosive journey through a dystopian landscape, begging a desperate question – who are we when no one is watching?

James Anderson has infiltrated Ark Island. No outsider has breached the stronghold of the authoritarian regime, but James is in. In a prison cell, sure, but a win is a win. Rosabelle Wolff is tightly controlled – where constant surveillance is packaged as security, even emotions must be experienced with caution. When she’s given an order to kill, she never hesitates…

Join Alex Wharton, Children’s Laureate Wales, and be transported by creative electricity, joy and mystery. In this event poetry, rap and songs dance together as one. Combining his four collections of fizzy-dizzy words, he seeks to connect us, transport us and inspire a love of playful, curious and imaginative language.

Alex Wharton is an award-winning writer and performer of poetry for adults and children. His first book of poetry for children, Daydreams and Jellybeans, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year Award, the Lollies Book Awards, and was named as a National Poetry Day Recommended Read.

Come and join Rooted Forest School for some outdoor family sessions offering natural creativity for everyone. We’ll use willow and natural materials to create a collaborative piece of nature art in the Family Garden. Dress for the weather and expect to get messy! These sessions will run whatever the weather, so make sure you’re wrapped up for the conditions.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative in these interactive sessions delivered by artists and discover that your imagination is the only limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven.

Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

Spend a special afternoon with author Michael Morpurgo and musician and actor Ben Murray, as they retell War Horse in this moving concert.

First published in 1982, War Horse is one of Morpurgo’s best known and most beloved books. It has gone on to be adapted for the stage in an award-winning production by the National Theatre and for the screen in a Steven Spielberg film.

Told from the perspective of a young farm horse Joey, it follows his story as he is taken from the fields of Devon to the Western Front after being sold to the British Army in 1914. With his officer, Joey charges towards the enemy, witnessing the horror of the frontline.

In this event, Morpurgo retells an abridged version of War Horse accompanied by music and songs from Murray, who previously played the Songman in the National Theatre production of the book.

How do you create world-changing television that resonates across generations? How do you bring ambitious, complex stories to life for global audiences? Join Jane Tranter, CEO of Bad Wolf and executive producer of award-winning television shows such as His Dark Materials, Industry and Succession, as she shares the journey behind her career – from navigating an ever-evolving television landscape, to setting up her own production company.

In this workshop-style event, Jane will draw on her extensive experience to offer invaluable insights and advice for aspiring storytellers looking to make their mark in the television industry.

This event is one of a Hay Festival series of sessions delivered by inspiring producers and practitioners from the creative industries, giving their insights, experience and advice on progression in their field.

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.

Come and join Rooted Forest School for some outdoor family sessions offering natural creativity for everyone. We’ll use willow and natural materials to create a collaborative piece of nature art in the Family Garden. Dress for the weather and expect to get messy! These sessions will run whatever the weather, so make sure you’re wrapped up for the conditions.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven.

Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven.

Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

Join much-loved actor and activist Michael Sheen for a family event to launch A Home for Spark the Dragon – a heartwarming story about the importance of finding a home, written in association with national home and homelessness charity Shelter. When Spark the dragon wakes up and finds a storm has destroyed his nest, he tries to find a new place to live. But Spark soon discovers that a house needs more than just walls to feel like home. Will he ever find the right place for him?

Shimmy up to hear the ballroom star, Strictly Come Dancing judge and author Anton Du Beke talk about his new book for young readers with CBeebies presenter Maddie Moate.

Set in Britain during WW2, the book sees 10-year-old twins Harry and Rosie evacuated to live with their great uncle on the Lancashire coast. Missing the vibrancy of London and the dancers at the tearoom where their mother works, they throw themselves into a local Christmas show. But when Harry sees strange lights out on the treacherous mudflats, he and Rosie discover their new home is hiding huge secrets…

Get your Hay day off to a brilliant start with our daily Ready, Steady, Music workshops! With different activities each day, these interactive, fun-filled sessions for mini musicians and their grown-ups will have you tapping sticks, roaring like dinosaurs, flying with unicorns, dancing with scarves, playing with parachutes and so much more. Come and meet our puppets, explore our range of instruments and listen to the beautiful sound of the cello.

Captivating young imaginations and creating lasting memories, these sessions offer a unique musical adventure. The perfect way to boost wellbeing, increase confidence, spark creativity and introduce children to the joy of music.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative in these interactive sessions delivered by artists and discover that your imagination is the only limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.