BP Family Festival: Play the Gallery

How can we play the gallery? Follow the rules of the game or make up your own as Tate Britain is transformed into a place of play for the weekend.

Kick start your half term and drop in to our free, two day family festival where artists bring the gallery to life through performance, sound and dance. 

Here’s some of the ways you can play:

Move through a portal to decide your own journey with the help of a colourful object. Take part in a giant game of catch in Elastic Communal Tours, or be brought on an artist-led futuristic journey in 2217: Tate Tribes. 

Make up your own games to be broadcast around the gallery in our Rules for Games Lab and create your own sculptures using everyday objects for #emptyplinth. View artwork from different perspectives in The Tallest, or have your say in a chat show moderated by 12 year old Evelyn in Chat Chat Evelyn Art. 

Look out for the mysterious trans.mission.Q, and have a chat with the DJ from outer space. Listen out for Kinetika Bloco whose percussive, wind and brass sounds fill the galleries or sit down and play an artwork digitally in Swingaling and Patatap.

Experience roaming dance in the Tate Collection with giant wooden hands leading the way in Hands on, Perspective, or view a performance inspired by a 4 year old’s reaction to Tate Britain in Nowse Bwoy and Aunty.. the saving of a life. Join in if the mood takes you or hang back and enjoy.

You could also be part of a series of short films about the festival in Still Moving Still.  

BP Family Festival is a participatory event for family members of all ages - inclusive of children, parents and grandparents - inviting participants to return to play the gallery again and again.

Featuring artists Adam James and Hamish McPherson, Albert Potrony, Ania Bas, Daniel Oliver, Eileen Perrier, Freddie Opoku-Addaie, Hydar Dewachi, Kinetika Bloco, Mamoru Iriguchi, Evelyn Shlomowitz (with Nefeli Skarmea), Rebekah Ubuntu, Zinzi Minott and Pete Yelding. 

The film above captures the BP Family Festival 2015: Bring your tribe. This event was aimed at 8-14 year olds and was packed with music, interactive performances and participatory workshops celebrating connectivity, creativity and kinship.

The event was free to all and visitors had opportunities to take part in artist led activities, enjoy interactive pop-up bands and more. They were invited to join in with the ‘mash-up’ choir led by the charismatic Ida Barr, a retired music hall singer who loves to mix classical music and hip-hop, or they could play team games as an artwork in the Tate collection, encountering other Tate artwork teams with Adam James. Bring Your Tribe also presented the spectacular sonic, visual interactive Sugar Ship. Specially presented by Dubmorphology and Gaylene Gould, the Sugar Ship was moored in the Duveen Galleries. Shipmates asked visitors to board the ship and help search for misplaced tribes with the Data Thieves in a sonic visual landscape.