April is play month at Seattle Center, with a fun and lively line-up of child-friendly activities to take families through the traditional spring break period and beyond.

The campus is abuzz with youthful goings-on at destinations like Artists at Play, International Fountain, Space Needle and Pottery Northwest featuring Student Show & Sale, April 5-26. International Children’s Friendship Festival, April 6-7, highlights the coming weekend and Movin’ Around the World: Spring the coming week, April 6-12. World Rhythm Festival fills several campus venues Saturday, April 20, and Seattle Center Festál: Seattle Cherry Blossom & Japanese Cultural Festival returns April 26-28 to Fisher Pavilion and Armory.

Here are some additional opportunities to explore fun, family-oriented activities at Seattle Center this month:

Take time over the spring break to discover innovations and inventions that help create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life, immerse yourself in debates about education, health and poverty and take action on a cause you care about at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discover Center. The Center commemorates the 19th Annual Pacific Islander heritage month in Washington State, 4 p.m., Saturday, April 20, with an elders’ welcome and blessing and a sacred tuba ceremony. The event offers Pacific Islander music and spoken word and traditional foods. Free and open to the public with RSVP.

Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), open daily 10 a.m.–5 p.m., presents several current and traveling exhibits for music, popular culture and science fiction enthusiasts of all ages. MoPOP holds its annual Spring Scout Day, Saturday, April 27, when visitors are encouraged to bring their troop, family and friends for an activity and leave with a fun patch (while supplies last). For more information, call 206-262-3420.

Pacific Science Center offers daily exhibits and activities in its many galleries and theaters. PSC’s Laser Dome offers a packed roster of shows that feature stunning laser imagery and powerful sound. Visitors may also blast-off to the outer reaches of the universe, explore the planets in our own solar system or learn about recent discoveries in the Willard Smith Planetarium. Or learn the latest on efforts to eradicate malaria in Uganda, while lifting communities out of poverty at Eradicating Malaria: The Big Fight Against Little Mosquitos, 7 p.m.-9 p.m., Tuesday, April 9.

Kids can explore where food comes from and how it tastes, mix ingredients and create exothermic reactions and small explosions at Seattle Children’s Museum’s spring camp, Eat. Play. Learn! A special Earth Day Celebration, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday, April 21,allows participants to explore what it means to use “clean energy,” with readings by local artist and author, Casey Ailes, and recycled super heroes. Discovery Days Camps are designed to meet a child’s varied needs, in half or full-day and even full week increments. Each camp day has a theme, along with science, art and cultural programming and activities for ages 4 to 10. 

Seattle Children’s Theatre presents Balloonacy, a wordless, situational comedy, in which The Old Man, who lives alone, prepares to celebrate his birthday. To his surprise, the solitary festivities are interrupted when a playful Red Balloon floats into his apartment, shaking up his normal routine, through May 5 in Eve Alvord Theatre, and The Diary of Anne Frank, a sobering true story of eight people living in hiding in Nazi occupied Holland during World War II, as seen through the eyes of 13-year-old Anne Frank, through May 19 in Charlotte Martin Theatre.

For more information on events and activities throughout the year at Seattle Center, visit: www.seattlecenter.org or call 206-684-7200.

What happens on the waterfront after the Viaduct is gone? Friends of Waterfront Seattle invites you to imagine the future park with a special pop-up umbrella performance by Kinesis Project dance theatre at Pier 58 while the public will be strolling on the Viaduct for one last time.

WAKE, a colorful, large-scale, site-specific performance on the waterfront by Kinesis Project dance theatre accompanied by music from Filthy FemCorps, Seattle’s all-female-non-binary street band, will take place Saturday, February 2 at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. at the pier between the Great Wheel and Seattle Aquarium. Jazzy, joyful, and artful, the performance will celebrate the post Viaduct future when the city is reconnected to its central shoreline via living, dancing, powerfully beautiful art in public spaces.
Community members will line the way toward Pier 58 with breathtaking and bright umbrellas designed by Seattle artist, Celeste Cooning. The pop-up performance will have dual vantage points — waterfront visitors will be able to watch the performance from the Viaduct and the ground

Friends has been enlivening the existing waterfront since 2015 with cultural events, including live music and performances including the K-Pop Now! Festival, 206 Zulu Beat Masters hip hop beat-making competition, and site-specific dances by Kinesis Project dance theatre. Saturday’s WAKE performance is a taste of things to come with the waterfront park. To learn more about what’s coming to Seattle’s waterfront, visit www.friendsofwaterfrontseattle.org/coming_soon.

“We are thrilled to be celebrating this moment in Seattle’s history with a cultural happening representing the park’s awakening. Seattle’s future Waterfront Park will provide beautiful spaces for people to play, relax, enjoy the views, and have unforgettable experiences,” said Heidi Hughes, Executive Director of Friends of Waterfront Seattle.

Kinesis Projects dance theatre’s Artistic Director and Choreographer Melissa Riker said, “My goal is to create a vibrant and unforgettable impression of colors, music, art, and movement. WAKE will bring the energy of Seattle’s awakening Waterfront Park right before the city’s eyes.”

Friends of Waterfront Seattle is the City of Seattle’s nonprofit partner helping to build the park and ensure its lasting success. Following the public-benefit partnership model, we educate the public about the park and its benefits, raise philanthropic funds to build the park, and will partner with the City to manage and program the park long-term. Our goal is to make the central waterfront a public mixing ground where all communities can share cultural, recreational, and civic experiences in a beautiful environment. Waterfront Seattle / Friends is a founding member of the High Line Network, a movement in cities across the world to reclaim underutilized infrastructure and reimagine it as public space. Explore the future park at our project showroom, Waterfront Space, located at 1400 Western Avenue in Seattle, and open Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.

Kinesis Project dance theatre is a non-profit organization that creates site-specific dance performances and facilitates educational programs. The company produces large-scale, space-changing, and unexpectedly intimate dances. Kinesis Project is at the forefront of the international discussion of placemaking, art engagement with diverse communities, and the cultural imperative of art in public spaces.