Building your own bowerbird nest using natural materials and walking the tightwire playground are some of the cool activities on offer for kids this Saturday, September 21 at the Playground Festival in The Quad.

The free interactive festival includes music and roving performances - and families are encouraged to spend the day having fun in a kids’ wonderland in the heart of Lismore.

The Quad’s placemaking officer Marisa Snow said it’s the second year the festival been operating in partnership with Lismore Regional Gallery.

“We knew there was a real gap in the market for making kids programs, so the Playground Festival is a way to engage them in fun, active workshops," Marisa said.

“Lismore Regional Gallery Educational tours director Peggy Popart will be holding her art gallery tours throughout the day and there’s even a workshop showing people how to make their own playground using recycled materials. 

“We are launching for the first time the Tight Wire Playground which is a custom designed circus playground. It was co-created by Simone O’Brien from SeedArts and young people in the three weeks leading up to the festival - and Simone will be doing interactive performances on the day.”

Spaghetti Circus will be setting up an interactive play space and performing their new kids show called Planet Lava. 

The Build Your Own Giant Bower Bird Nest workshop will let kids create their own human size bower bird nests with landscape architects Earth Play. People can watch the activity evolve over the day into a field of nests to play in. 

Peggy Popart with Simone O’Brien from Seed Arts and children from Lismore Preschool.

Poppy Galactic and The Beat -an electronic dance music duo for kids, will create fun music that kids (and adults) love dancing to.

Roundabout Theatre will bring ‘The Slow Show’ to The Quad, with Trichia - a nature-loving human and Helix a giant garden snail. They live in Helix's beautifully crafted shell and are slowly travelling the world, enjoying the magic in simple things.

Absurdly serious fitness fanatics The Walkie Talkies will get your heart racing and your belly laughing.

The Northern Rivers Conservatorium will hold music classes based around play, rhythm, movement, story-telling and hands-on tasters of musical instruments for 3-8 year olds. You can rock out to the Youth Rock Band and other young performers in the performance space.

The Clubhouse (downstairs at the Northern Rivers Conservatorium) will hold a series of workshops throughout the day including badge making, make your own drawing robots, jewellery making and photoshop mashup poster design.

The Playground Festival is on Saturday, September 21, 10am to 4pm in The Quad & Lismore Regional Gallery at 11 Rural St, Lismore.

For more information, visit www.lismorequad.org.au and www.lismoreregionalgallery.org