The most familiar Mercè, festivals and art: what to do with children this week

This weekend is full of cultural and family leisure activities. As always, we have prepared a selection of activities for you to do with your children on September 25th, 26th, and 27th, such as continuing to attend the most family-friendly activities of La Mercè, enjoying the cultural proposals of the Rubió Performing Arts Festival, or exploring your most creative side at Art-Acció!, the annual day of artistic experimentation at the Girona Museum.

We also propose a review of current events through the section To think about and we offer you the data and statements that have caught our attention the most.

Cultural and leisure activities

La Mercè returns to fill Barcelona with celebration this weekend. Days to enjoy with the family from a wide range of circus, theater, dance, music, puppetry, participatory installations, and workshops, and, best of all, distributed across different neighborhoods of the city. This year, moreover, the guest city is Shanghai.

Within its programming, you will find Mercè Arts de Carrer, with a host of family proposals for all ages. Noteworthy are the activities at Glòries Park, which debuts as a stage for La Mercè with a day of family activities on September 24th; Estació del Nord Park; the Joan Maragall Gardens – Palauet Albéniz and the Olympic Port.

Festivart is the Rubió Performing Arts Festival, a cultural proposal that combines performing arts, rurality, and spectacle in a privileged natural setting in the Anoia region.

A program for the whole family full of workshops, circus, magic, tightrope walking, street music, and other shows fill the festival with culture and fun. And with a food truck area, picnic area, creator stalls, and children's activities.

A festival that seeks to make culture and the performing arts accessible to everyone and to showcase diversity on stage. For one day, the Devesa del Pla in Ripoll becomes the setting for concerts, shows with inclusive productions, an awareness-raising space, activities, and workshops for the whole family.

This year the festival features the participation of Xiula, La Ludwig Band, and The Tyets, among many others, and is promoted by the Fundació MAP, which provides services to people with disabilities in the Ripollès region.

With the start of the school year, family cinema premieres also arrive. You can still see Mumbo Jumbo gets huge, a story dedicated to the importance of believing in one's own strength and in everyone's identity.

Mumbo is a hippopotamus who lives comfortably with his mother, but one day by accident he eats a mysterious mushroom that makes him grow and grow. He is so huge that he does not even fit in his house. Luckily, a mandrill, Frede, finds the solution to the problem, but Mumbo will have to go to Siberia to find it. Luckily, his best friends, the Tapir, the Cheetah, and Mimbo Jimbo, accompany him on this adventure. A journey to return to being small in size but to learn to grow up. Recommended from three years old.

Every year, the Girona Art Museum proposes an artistic day to explore materials, techniques, and artistic procedures in an active and experiential way. In this fifth edition of Art-Acció!, the protagonist will be stone, an element that has accompanied humanity since its beginnings.

You will participate in workshops and activities where you can express your creativity as a family by exploring stone, a material we believed to be unalterable, and, at the same time, reflect on how vulnerability is also a condition for change, and how in marks, erosions, and wear there are traces of a history in constant construction. Throughout the day, you will be able to experiment freely, guided by invited artisans and artists.

Until September 27, the Passeig Lluís Companys in Barcelona will be the stage for the largest festival of books and magazines in the Catalan language. The Week features an extensive and diverse program that is reflected through publishing imprints, literary genres, and the Catalan reading public. Families can choose from over 80 activities offered by a total of 41 publishers and organizations. There will be shows, oral storytelling, and workshops, which will be spread across three specific spaces: the Family stage, the Workshop tent, and the Little Reading tent. This last space, in addition, will include a corner dedicated to Anna Fité, an illustrator who passed away at the beginning of the year.

It is a unique occasion to meet renowned authors within our local children's and youth literature such as Míriam Tirado, Jaume Copons and Liliana Fortuny, Care Santos and Adrián Olmedo, and Meritxell Martí and Rocío Bonilla, and to enjoy artistic and musical proposals like those of Dàmaris Gelabert, Ambauka, Atrapasomnis or Vivim del Cuentu. And do not miss the Seek and find dynamic, designed for families, a game in which you will have to find your favorite books at the fair stalls.

If you want to take a trip to the past, visit the Archaeology Museum of Catalonia, located in Montjuïc. This month of September, a family activity is offered in which you will discover that pollen can reveal what a landscape was like thousands of years ago.

Through observation, experimentation, and different challenges, you will learn to identify these small natural particles and learn how they are used to know which plants grew in a territory, what the climate was like, and how the environment influenced the lives of our ancestors. Every Sunday in September, with an entrance price of 2 euros.

Do your little ones like to collect small pieces, little animals, and amulets? Well, at the Espai Minipanera in Lleida there is an exhibition they will love: The warmth of beautiful things, by Martina Rogers, visual artist and cultural mediator. An exhibition of objects that, through play and connection with nature, invites you to open all your senses to capture the invisible.

This artist uses her hands as her main tool, and fuses various artistic techniques, such as drawing, engraving, ceramics, and animation. She knows very well how to transfer energy through clay modeling. The color, brightness, shape, and texture give off vital movement. Come and discover the warmth of beautiful things!

You still have time until October to visit the corn maze at Granja Pifarré in Lleida. An activity that brings the Horta de Lleida and the work of local producers closer to all audiences. Throughout the route, you will have to overcome a series of agricultural, educational, and equally entertaining challenges, under the slogan Flavors of the West. It is an ideal activity to do with family and friends. Furthermore, when you finish, you can have a drink on their terrace with products from Ponent and let the children play in the rural play area with a tractor circuit. The corn maze is open on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings in September and October. The ticket price is €10 for adults and €8 for children.

The family activities at La Pedrera - Casa Milà are a very good opportunity to visit this unique building while also learning more about its architecture. As you know, Gaudí was highly inspired by nature. Therefore, in this activity, full of mystery, you will be able to discover which animals and plants are hidden in the walls of La Pedrera - Casa Milà.

The proposal is designed for children over three years old. Purchase the €9.5 ticket for September 11, 12, 24, or 26.

Things that happen (to me)

Literary recommendations

A new adventure arrives featuring the best-known mice in children's literature, Sam and Julia. As expected, the tooth fairy also lives in the fantastic mouse house, and that is why Karina Schaapman dedicates a title to him in the famous collection, which is already a bestseller.

Julia has a loose tooth! Sam explains the secret of the tooth fairy to her, and warns her that if she leaves the tooth under her pillow, he will give her a gift. Julia is very excited and at the same time wonders: what must this mouse do with all the teeth he collects? Do you want to find out too? Then join Sam and Julia in this fun story, full of surprises and little mysteries.

Recommended from 5 years old.

To think about

This week the Department of Health published the Digital Health Guide,prepared based on 700 scientific studies. A work that shows the impacts according to different age groups and points out physical, mental, and relational risks such as developmental delays, cavities, myopia, sleep disorders, emotional problems, and digital violence. In fact, as the deputy director general of Addictions, Lluïsa Conejos, has underlined, some impacts of screen use in children and young people can be "irreversible". In the document there are truly alarming figures, but which do not surprise us, such as the fact that the average age of access to the first mobile phone is 10.8 years or that young people between 14 and 18 years old spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on the internet for leisure.

Faced with this public health problem, it is also necessary to be responsible and critical because, as the report gathers, the use of screens does not depend solely on the individual; the family, school, and social environments also play an important role. We are all aware that as adults we often set a bad example in digital consumption. What can we expect, then, from our children if they only see adults with a mobile phone in their hand around them? For this reason, the guide will serve as a basis for the Government to specify measures for families and professionals. In fact, President Illa has already proposed banning artificial intelligence (AI) in schools until the age of 14 and promoting reading among the new generations.

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