Μake us preferred on Google The Cycladic Kids Festival returns to Athens on September 26 and 27, transforming the City of Athens Arts Center in Eleftherias Park into a two-day celebration of art, creativity and inclusion shaped by children and teenagers themselves.
Organized for the fourth consecutive year by the Museum of Cycladic Art, the festival will offer free admission and a wide-ranging program for children ages 4 and up, teenagers, families and adults.
This year’s theme, “The Museum I Want It to Be…,” grew out of the museum’s 13th International Art Competition, in which 12,500 children and teenagers from around the world shared their ideas about a museum through drawings and recorded responses.
The festival brings those ideas into the physical world. Every activity on the program takes its title from a work that received an award or distinction in the competition.
Art, technology and hands-on creativity
Visitors will encounter a festival that moves well beyond traditional museum activities, with sensory workshops, film screenings, theater, dance, concerts, stand-up comedy, sculpture, painting, video animation, augmented reality and a mobile skatepark.
Photo Paris Tavitian © Museum of Cycladic Art
Cycladic Kids Festival © George Labropoulos
Inside the Arts Center’s exhibition space, an animated video will bring the children’s award-winning artworks to life inside a virtual Museum of Cycladic Art. Visitors can also digitally explore all the entries in the competition.
Technology will play another role through an augmented-reality experience. A large Cycladic figurine at the entrance will appear to come alive when visitors scan it, moving and interacting with its surroundings.
The festival will also invite visitors to respond directly to works from the museum’s permanent collection. Two large walls will provide space for free expression through drawing, writing and spoken words, while blank canvases will allow children to create their own works for a collective exhibition that will change throughout the weekend.
The museum’s educational kits—suitcases filled with stories and objects from its collection that have traveled throughout Greece and abroad—will also be opened for visitors to explore. A ballot box next to the kits will invite children and adults to suggest new ways they would like the museum to travel and connect with audiences in the future.
A festival built around inclusion
Accessibility is central to this year’s event. The festival was designed in collaboration with accessibility specialists from liminal to ensure that visitors can participate regardless of age, needs or social background.
Cycladic Kids Festival 2025 © George Labropoulos
The venue is accessible to people with mobility disabilities, while selected exhibits and activities will include Greek Sign Language interpretation, subtitles for Deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors, audio description, Braille materials and tactile maps for visitors with visual disabilities.
Workshops will also include adaptations and preparatory materials for neurodivergent visitors.
The program includes accessible short films for children with visual, hearing and neurodevelopmental disabilities and children on the autism spectrum. Families can also take part in “Clickable — The Museum with Your Eyes Closed,” an experiential photography workshop in which parents and children explore the museum and Eleftherias Park through hearing, touch, smell and imagination.
The S.K.E.P. organization will offer activities designed to raise awareness about disability, with people with visual disabilities, wheelchair users and people who are deafblind sharing aspects of their everyday experiences with visitors.
Exploring Cycladic culture through art
The festival will also introduce visitors to Cycladic Identity, an initiative of the Museum of Cycladic Art focused on protecting the cultural and natural heritage of the Cyclades, a group of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.
Cycladic Kids Festival 2025 © George Labropoulos
Photo Paris Tavitian © Museum of Cycladic Art
As part of the European Heritage Days, the festival will host two workshops inspired by Cycladic culture. Boulouki will introduce children to traditional building techniques using authentic materials, including stone and clay mortar, while artist Faye Hatzi will lead a weaving workshop using colorful threads and natural stones inspired by the colors of the Cycladic landscape.
Other activities will connect children with ancient Greek food, nature and culture. AGALE will use the museum’s “Food in Ancient Greece” educational kit for a sensory journey involving herbs, spices and natural ingredients. Children will identify plants by smell before preparing their own healthy energy bites while wearing chef hats and aprons.
The Directorate of Refugee Education will also bring together children from different backgrounds to explore the Cyclades using the museum’s “Cycladic Culture” educational kit.
Theater, dance and music across the park
Performances will take place throughout the festival, with the TOPI theater group presenting two productions filled with humor, interaction and imagination.
The A(r)CT group will present the dance-theater performance “Parallel Yellow Lines” and invite visitors to become part of “EVERYWHERE,” a participatory dance event unfolding across the festival grounds.
Photo Paris Tavitian © Museum of Cycladic Art
Katerina Gevetzi and Demi Papathanasiou will lead an inclusive dance workshop for people with and without disabilities, exploring new ways of connecting with the body, space and works of art.
The Katsikes Kseroun ton Dromo group will draw inspiration from the children’s competition entries, combining them with musical storytelling, action and humor. Actors and storytellers will also share stories about museums and art.
Evenings bring skateboarding, comedy and youth bands
As the sun sets, the festival will shift its focus toward teenagers and adults.
On Saturday, Free Movement will set up a mobile skatepark outdoors, giving teenagers an introduction to skateboarding. Onstage, Greek stand-up comedians Byron Theodoropoulos and Michalis Mathioudakis will perform for older audiences.
On both days, youth bands formed through the Band Workshop for Kids & Teens will take the stage, showcasing their music and energy.
Cycladic Kids Festival 2025 © George Labropoulos
The festival will also feature a free reading space created with books from the Faros Library for the Blind and SEARCH Children’s Library. Readers can turn stories, images and museum objects into a collective visual “museum,” while tactile books and creative activities will make reading a multisensory experience centered on acceptance, respect, inclusion, equality and individuality.
Cycladic Kids Festival: Dates and location
The fourth Cycladic Kids Festival will take place at the City of Athens Arts Center in Eleftherias Park on Saturday, September 26, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, September 27, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Admission is free.
The venue is located on Vasilissis Sofias Avenue, near the Megaro Moussikis Metro station. The festival is organized by the Museum of Cycladic Art in collaboration with the City of Athens Organization for Culture, Sports and Youth, with Eurobank as its major sponsor.
Cycladic Kids Festival 2025 © George Labropoulos
