The Hepworth Wakefield wins Fantastic For Families' Best Family Arts Activity Award 2025

The Hepworth Wakefield is thrilled to share that the gallery has won the Best Family Arts Activity Award in the Fantastic for Families Awards 2025 for the Surreal Landscapes family project.

These national awards celebrate outstanding opportunities created for families and older audiences to access creative opportunities and enhance wellbeing through arts and cultural activities. Award-winners were selected out of over 135 applications, shortlisted to 26 organisations, from across the United Kingdom.

The Best Family Arts Activity Award celebrates creative events and activities developed especially for families. The judges for this category were Cath Hume, CEO of Arts Marketing Association; Alison Bowyer, Executive Director of Kids in Museums; and Robert O’Dowd, Chief Executive of the Rose Theatre Kingston.

The judges said: ‘We loved how this project gave families rare, up-close access to artworks — even helping decide how paintings were hung. It’s a brilliant example of genuine co-creation, making the gallery experience imaginative and inclusive for all, and we can see that The Hepworth Wakefield will continue to engage families in the long-term.’

Jessica Witkowska, Families & Communities Programmer at The Hepworth Wakefield, said: ‘We are delighted to have won the Fantastic for Families award for the Surreal Landscapes family project – it recognises the truly collaborative effort that went into the project. Thank you to Art Fund for their generous support via the Respond and Re-imagine grant and artist Rachel Sim who led on the project alongside the gallery’s learning and curatorial teams. Most importantly thank you to the families that took part in this project. Their input has helped grow the family programme and continue to make The Hepworth Wakefield a brilliant place for children, families and communities.’

Fantastic For Families Awards are given by Family Arts Campaign, which is the largest national, cross-art form initiative to increase access to arts and culture for families of all ages. The Family Arts Campaign is funded by Arts Council England and is a National Portfolio Organisation within the national Let’s Create strategy.

In summer 2024, The Hepworth Wakefield invited families to help choose a selection of artworks from the Jeffrey Sherwin & Family Collection for display in the Forbidden Territories: 100 years of Surreal Landscapes exhibition. Families had the special experience of seeing artworks from the stores with our learning and curatorial teams.

Through creative looking, drawing, making and story-telling, participants discovered the themes, stories and techniques in the artworks. Responses from the children to their chosen artworks were incorporated within the display in the gallery and in a trail around the exhibition.

Funded by an Art Fund Respond & Re-imagine grant.