Serpentine Family Days

Join us for a family day inspired by the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion by LANZA atelier. Taking cues from the studio’s approach to materials, making, playing and ecology, families are invited to experiment with natural processes and collaborative building.

Enjoy free, hands-on activities throughout the day, from natural dyeing and weaving to seed sowing and playful outdoor games. Work together to create forms that respond to the Pavilion and the park.

Inspired by the work of David Hockney, this Family Day invites children and adults to look closely, move freely and capture the world around them. Through collage, drawing and walking-based activities, families can explore colour, perspective and landscape in playful ways.

Join us for a day of making, mapping and imagining, celebrating the joy of seeing and creating in the open air.

ACTIVITIES

Games: Bramble Works Ensemble

This playful, movement-led activity invites children and families to explore LANZA Atelier’s ‘a serpentine’ through a series of fun and accessible games inspired by its flowing curves and shifting spaces.
Through a mix of structured and open-ended play, families are encouraged to navigate winding pathways, gather within shared spaces, and respond to the Pavilion’s relationship with the surrounding landscape.
Jump in, get involved, and make some new friends. See you at the crinkle-crankle wall!

Creative Tours: Bramble Works Ensemble

These creative tours invite children and families to explore the vibrant worlds of David Hockney and Cecily Brown through playful observation, guided conversation, and imaginative activities.
Moving through the exhibitions, participants are encouraged to notice colour, composition, texture, and storytelling, discovering how each artist captures the natural world and everyday life in distinctive and expressive ways.
The tour concludes with an arts and crafts activity, where children create their own artworks inspired by what they have seen, experimenting with colour, shape, and mark-making.

Wiggly Walls: DesignBloom

Led by DesignBloom, this playful workshop invites children and families to explore architecture through making, building, and experimentation.
Inspired by the Pavilion’s crinkle-crankle wall, the rhythmic repetition of brick columns, and the interplay between openness and enclosure, children will discover how architecture can guide movement, support gathering, and encourage play.
Using a range of materials, families will create their own small-scale pavilions by shaping, repeating, and assembling forms in imaginative ways.

If I were a Leaf: Jolene Liam

Join artist and architect Jolene Liam to make maps of journeys around the Serpentine Galleries. We will imagine what it’s like to shift between different viewpoints, either from personal experiences or the perspectives of other species.
Your map could combine views of Hyde Park with elements depicted within the galleries’ artworks, or it could be totally abstract. You could either draw while walking or seated, from observation or from memory.
This activity responds to David Hockney’s current exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery, ‘A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting’, where trees and leaves are the main characters, described through lots of different types of mark-making techniques.

Look Again: Louisa Tan for Common Exception

Look Again is a drop-in collage and drawing workshop by Punk Joy artist Louisa Tan, inspired by David Hockney’s joy in looking.
Hockney gives us a way of seeing the world with curiosity. He also reminds us that drawing from life is never just about copying what is in front of us: “When you draw from life, you’re drawing from memory.”
This workshop invites families to look again at the everyday, and turn what they notice into bold drawings and colourful collages.

This Family Day draws on the expressive and imaginative world of Cecily Brown, alongside a special focus on the Serpentine’s Pavilion archive. Families are invited to explore storytelling, fairytales and mark-making through a series of hands-on workshops.

Discover past Pavilions through archival materials, take part in creative activities inspired by their forms and histories, and contribute to new stories inspired by the Pavilion today.