imagine children’s Festival

With 11 days jam-packed with full-on fun for ages 0 – 11, come and enjoy the very best children’s theatre, comedy, music, literature, poetry and dance this February half-term at the Southbank Centre.

Imagine Children’s Festival turns 21 in 2023, but has no intention of growing up any time soon! Get ready for our annual festival for children aged 0 – 11 and their grown-ups from Wednesday 8 - Saturday 18 February: 11 days jampacked with more than 100 events, over 50% of which are completely free.

Join us for performance and dance for under-5s during the week before half-term, including Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s beloved Tales from Acorn Wood brought to life on stage with toe-tapping songs and puppetry.

Half-term highlights include explores the story of life on Earth told through the major mass extinctions, and Zanib Mian celebrates the fifth book in the Planet Omar series at an interactive event. Saxophonist YolanDa returns with a live version of her CBeebies TV show YolanDa’s Band Jam, and Jarred and Hobbit are back with an all-new action-packed beatboxing and comedy hoopla with The Mighty Kids Beatbox Comedy Show Strikes Back! Plus, Tongue Fu for Kids offers a family-friendly version of one of the UK’s leading spoken word and music shows, and there’s poetry writing workshops and readings at The National Poetry Library.

For the older kids, Friday 17 and Saturday 18 February have a special focus on ages 7 – 11, with shows including Carol Ann Duffy’s dance-theatre retelling of Rapunzel, presented by balletLORENT.

Also, don't miss Everything Has Changed, a show that combines humour, theatre and spoken word, encouraging young people to reflect on recent years and share their hopes for the future.

The festival includes a wide range of free events and activities, including demos and workshops from ZooNation Youth Company and BAC Beatbox Academy, a daytime rave with the current Guinness World Record holder for the world’s youngest club DJ, an ink-filled day of illustration and storytelling, artwork from acclaimed street artist STIK, and much, much more!

Imagine Children’s Festival is a Relaxed festival, meaning that performances have a relaxed approach to noise and movement in the space, and you are free to enter and exit. A chill-out space and noise-cancelling headphones are also available for both adults and children.

Book tickets now at www.southbankcentre.co.uk/ imagine

It was amid the great shakeup of 2020 that florist and born-and-bred south Londoner Francesca Goldstone knew it was time to realise her dream of running her own business. She’d been working in the industry for a decade, years of which were spent running the wedding department for popular boutique florist Grace & Thorn in east London. She took the plunge, setting up her eponymous floral studio Goldstones Flowers in Camberwell. Using flowers bought at the crack of dawn from wholesalers in New Covent Garden Flower Market, Francesca curates arrangements for milestone events like weddings, as well as seasonal bouquets for customers who book by appointment.

Here, she tells us about her mission to style flowers as ‘momentary pieces of art’, plus the bouquets to buy for Valentine’s Day…

Holly O’Mahony: What was your aim with starting your own floristry business?

Francesca Goldstone: I wanted to create a business where I could express my own creativity, and my love of colour theory and design, giving myself the freedom to use a wide and wild variety of flowers.

HOM: What did you want to do differently to other florists in the industry?

FG: Ultimately, I wanted a business that at the core cared about how our customers felt. Flowers play a number of different roles: they can be sent as tokens of affection, to mark a celebration, by means of deep apology, to decorate a wedding, or simply as a gift to