Imagine Festival and Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo
Amongst the rain and the wind and the odd storm Dennis (or whatever the other one was called) we took a lovely little trip to the Southbank for their annual Imagine Children’s Festival. We’ve attended the Imagine Children’s festival for the last few years and we always have a brilliant time and come away inspired! You can read what we got up to at last year’s festival here. If you’ve not heard of it – it’s largest festival of its kind in the UK and is dedicated to families experiencing and enjoying all kinds of art and culture together. There are a full 12 days of international performance, music, literature, comedy, creativity for children 0 – 11 and their grown-ups. And believe me – it’s lots of fun for grown ups too!
Highlights of The Southbank Imagine Children’s Festival
There’s a good balance of free and paid for activities during the Imagine Festival. This year, as last year, we enjoyed the free giant chalkboard and chalk obstacle course outside (even in the rain!) and this year we were entertained by illustrators Gary Northfield and Nadine Kaadan who lead the children through an arty story workshop, Top Draw. My son (who is an avid fan of those kind of story/ cartoon books such as Tom Gates) loved watching how the illustrators created characters and there was brilliant interaction with the kids invited up to the stage to contribute to the cartoon.
My younger two (aged 3 and 6) really enjoyed the engaging show by the Groove Baby Organ Trio which brought to life the great Blue Note 1960s era with Soul Jazz and Gospel music. Groove Into the Woods follows a collection of kooky characters on a magical adventure into a fairy tale forest where they learn some important lessons about who you can trust. There was the usual counting songs and kid’s music to get us into the groove but what made this a really exciting musical performance was the kids got to use your mobile phone as a musical instrument! We downloaded an app to our phones which allowed the kids to join in with the music making! A great idea and it kept my little ones entertained for hours! See Groove Baby here to try and find your own performance.
Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo Review
The highlight of our trip to the Imagine Children’s Festival was the theatre performance of Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo. If you have any dinosaur fans or budding paleontologists – you’ll completely love this show! The tour begins in pre-historic Australia, where the audience meet, observe and interact with a collection of lifelike dinosaurs and other creatures. The dinosaurs are brought to life by a team of skilled performers and puppeteers and they are so extraordinarily realistic that at times you completely forget they are puppets! A highlight of the show for us was our Elodie getting invited on stage to put her head in a dinosaur!! It was tricky to remember for a split second that it was not a real dinosaur and she was perfectly safe!
Dinosaur Zoo Performance Dates
For more information about the Dinosaur Zoo and to find out if they are coming to terrify a theatre near you, find more about Dinosaur Zoo about them here. And, if you are lucky enough to catch them – don’t miss out on meeting a baby dinosaur after the show! The puppeteers met the audience outside the theatre and we got to have a cuddle with a baby dinosaur!
Look out for the Imagine Children’s Festival next year to see what delights they have in store! It’s a great Day Out in London during February Half Term.
