Activities for Families this Summer

Making plans for the summer? Looking for things to do with your family? Come and visit Orleans House Gallery and enjoy our café, exhibitions, the grounds and events. Read below to  find out more about our family activities this summer.

Visit the gallery grounds:

• Why not bring a picnic for the lawn?
• Explore the woods. What can you hear? What can you see?
• Borrow a clipboard, paper and pencil from the gallery front desk and create your own nature drawings. Don’t forget to share your creations at #OrleansHouseGallery
• Families in the Forest: Join us on an exploration on the woods as we encounter ancient trees, flowers, bats, moles, squirrels, even an antelope. Each plant and creature offers an invitation to us to consider their experience in the space by changing our own. Young bats seeing for the first time invite us to close our eyes and feel the surroundings with our hands, our fingers, our palms, to tread the ground, to summon colours into our imaginations, and when we open our eyes imagine we are emerging from a cave to encounter colour for the first time in our lives.  You can book to join a Families in the Forest session by visiting our What’s On. Sessions start on 17 August.

Visit our exhibition Remember the Future: Visit Now!

We are working with artists to explore reconnecting with nature. Highlights for families:

• Take part in the Colourfield artwork in the Octagon Room. Take a card, sit in a deckchair and name a colour (please note that this work is not on display during weddings).
• See the grown photosynthesis artwork Iggy Fox in the main gallery.
• Visit the Stables Gallery and share your thoughts and ideas with us in our Ideas Hub.

This summer, our artists in residence will be on site on the following dates for you to come and chat to them and find out all about what they are up to.  You don’t need to book, just show up on the day. 

• Nestor Pestana: Friday 13 August 1-5pm in the main gallery
• Vicky Long & Eloise Moody: Friday 20 August from 1-5pm in the Stables Gallery 
• Bryony Ella: Wednesday 25 August 1-5pm in the main gallery 

You may see the artists onsite at other times too.   If the artists are not in residence, you can see their research in the exhibition spaces. From 3 August, Remember the Future will be showing across both our gallery spaces.

Visit our What’s On for full details.

The Stables Café has a child-friendly menu. Check them out here: The Stables Café and visit for lunch or maybe just an ice cream.

Let’s Get Creative Returns on 15 August for more family fun with artist Bryony Ella. Targeted at children aged 4-11 years, you will see the woodland at Orleans House with new eyes as we draw with pencils, ink and found materials, pretending to be creatures big and small exploring the undergrowth on mini-adventures. This activity is free and can be booked here: Let’s Get Creative

Visit our website for details on the Covid-19 safety measures still in place to keep everyone safe at Orleans House Gallery this summer. Orleans House Gallery is open from 10am-5pm Tuesday to Sunday.