Festival Friday
Music, dancing, activities, and food to start the Festival weekend
Friday, May 30
6:00 PM–9:00 PM
Start your summer off right and visit the Ordway for the official beginning of the Flint Hills Family Festival Family Weekend! With music, dancing, activities, and food, there is something to please everyone in the family.
Special morning feature
NOOMA, an opera for babies
Friday night headliner
Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band
Free to attend
Outdoor performances
On Friday night, the park surrounding the Ordway comes to life with free, family-friendly acts! Bring your whole family for spectacular drumming performances, live DJing, wandering puppet artists, face-painting, and more!
Free to enjoy
Activities
Learn and create at the Festival! During the Flint Hills Family Festival weekend, Rice Park—just across from the Ordway—bustles with fun, free art-making activities, educational games, and more.
Rhythm of the City
Make beautiful music with the Ordway to celebrate their birthday! Decorate a colorful trumpet or guitar using artful reuse materials, then write your birthday wishes on it.
Bell Museum
Hands-on nature-themed art activities and specimens for participants to observe.
Carpenter St. Croix Valley Nature Center
A play on 'paint-by-number,' participants will have the chance to color, draw, or paint wildlife native to Minnesota. Follow an easy outline while observing one of CNC's live animal ambassadors! As you work, naturalists will share each animal's life history.
Children's Theatre Company
Make your own monster mask! Kids can use crayons, paper plates, and tactile multi-media materials to make a monster face.
Flint Hills Resources
Design and color a drawstring bag and show off your unique artistic skills and then use it to hold the other arts and crafts collected throughout the festival.
Hoàng Anh Vietnamese Dance Group
This year, in commemorating 50 years of the Vietnamese Americans in Minnesota, families can craft their own paper boat, symbol of survival, hope, and freedom; make a thank you card; or color a paper boy or girl bookmark in their traditional áo dài.
MathHappens Foundation
Come help us build the 3D Shape Museum by designing, assembling, and naming your own three-dimensional shape.
The Ordway
Color a spooky, kooky craft inspired by the first show of our 40th anniversary season, The Addams Family!
Rainbow Party Arts
Fun and fast face painting by award-winning artists.
Trần Thị Minh Phước
Learn how to fold papers while listening to the author's sea journey to America and stories from the book Vietnamese Folktales For Children: Stories of Adventure and Wonder in Vietnamese and English.