Kinder Gardens International early years theatre festival, features companies from Spain, Italy and the UK. Sian Kerry, Director of Arts Alive said “This is an ambitious programme , but I really wanted to give children the chance to see inspiring, beautiful and entertaining theatre designed specifically for young audiences. I love bringing flavours of other cultures and languages into the lives of rural children, and Kinder Gardens will do just that. Take your children, borrow some children, pretend to be a child, but do go!”

All these performances are developed for small children, not too long, in local, familiar, intimate spaces with smaller audiences so children aren’t intimidated and can confidently join in and take away new ideas.

Tell Tale Hearts start the festival with ‘Space Hoppers’, a promenade performance with interactive elements for 3-7 year olds combining beautifully designed installations, performance, puppetry, live music and poetry to create a magical experience for young children and their families. De Molecula from Spain performs a beautiful, tender piece of dance theatre without words for small children. ’Parapapel’, tells of two friends, a roll of paper becomes a blue sky, a blue sea. The UK’s Brown Paper Packages in ‘Favourite Strings’ explores movement, sounds, shapes, all from string! The festival winds up with an Italian company La Societá della Civetta in ‘Droplets’, an interactive play about water. This performance is based on sounds and simple actions, for children 1-6 years old.

This is a fantastic opportunity to see four companies performing four very different shows in sixteen venues between 9th - 29th June. All the shows have been chosen because of their high quality and originality, though they are each very different. Venues span the entire Arts Alive area from Whitchurch in North Shropshire to Ross on Wye in south of Herefordshire. All details are on the web site www.artsalive.co.uk