Vancouver International Children’s Festival

Since 1978, the Vancouver International Children’s Festival has provided world-class Canadian and International live performances and hands-on arts activities for children, parents, and teachers. Its groundbreaking multidisciplinary mix of theatre, music, dance, circus, puppetry, and storytelling has inspired similar events throughout Canada and abroad.

The fest’s motto is “creatively playful”, meaning it aims to inspire and motivate young minds with professional artistic experiences that transform a child’s understanding of the world. Those experiences can then open up a whole new world of creative possibilities to kids, building a passion for the arts in future generations.

The festival has such a rich and long history in Vancouver that children who grew up attending it are now returning as parents with their own young children, eager to share the experience with their kids again.

Located in Vanier Park for its first three decades, the festival moved to the vibrant cultural hub of Granville Island in 2011, where it serves up a mix of outdoor artistic activities and installations as well as world-class indoor performances at the site’s theatre venues. Performance tickets to the site include passes to its thriving Activity Village.

Over the years, the festival has played host to talents from iconic Canadian children’s singers Fred Penner and Charlotte Diamond to Quebec’s spectacular acrobatic Afrique en Cirque, and acts from as far away as Australia and Norway. It’s led the way not only in theatre for very young audiences (including babies and toddlers), but in First Nations art forms, whether it’s the Wild Moccasin Dance Sisters performing powwow forms or in hands-on Indigenous Art Workshops. There is also a strong component of French-language programming.

The fest is constantly searching out new, different, and culturally diverse work that pushes the boundaries work for young audiences—ranging all the way from six months to 13 years of age.