The 28th International Festival of Raleigh, featuring music, dance, art and more from around the world, runs Friday to Sunday at the Raleigh Convention Center. This is a big event with lots of opportunities to learn about other cultures. The event includes Sophia’s Corner for kids with face painting, storytelling, games and other activities. Tickets are between $5 and $8 depending on your age and what day you go. Kids 6 and under are free.
On Sunday, Chapel Hill’s Festifall Arts Festival will run noon to 6 p.m. along West Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill. The free festival, now in its 41st year, offers an artist’s market, hands-on activities, music and more. At the Ackland Art Museum’s Art on the Move pop up exhibit, visitors will be encouraged to create their own moving sculptures on their bikes, wagons or carts. The N.C. Symphony’s Instrument Zoo will be on hand. So will a tie dye bus, face painting, spin art and a graffiti art demonstration. New this year: The Chapel Hill Public Library will bring its Digital Bookmobile. Find it outside the Orange County Visitors Center. The one-of-a-kind traveling exhibit is a high-tech update of the old school bookmobile.
The Museum of Life and Science’s Global Cardboard Challenge continues through Saturday. The week- long challenge invites museum goers to build their own custom additions to what’s being called a Colossal Cardboard Imagination Machine. It all wraps up with a reveal of the final room-size cardboard creation to view and add on to on Saturday. It’s free with admission to the museum, which is $14 for adults and $10 for kids ages 3 to 12.
The Mallarme Chamber Players will present Pinocchio, a family concert, at 12:30 p.m., Saturday, at Kirby Horton Hall at Duke Gardens in Durham. The 45-minute concert is best for kids ages 5 to 12 and their families. Actor Paul Paliyenko will read a narration, with some Italian thrown in, of the story. The quartet will play 11 short movements with the musicians using their instruments to add the meows of cats, the groans of whales and the eerie harmonics of monsters, says a description. Get there early for an instrument zoo from High Strung Violins and Guitars. Tickets are $5 for kid ages 12 and under and $10 for everybody else.
Cirque Italia will present what’s called an “aquatic spectacular” with shows Thursday through Sunday in Raleigh. The show moves from city to city with a customized traveling tent and a water stage that holds more than 35,000 gallons of water. It features all sorts of aerial acts, hand balancing, contortionists and other circus acts. It takes place in the International Foods Plaza on Olympia Drive in Raleigh. I don’t know much beyond this, but it sounds fascinating. Tickets are between $9 and $35.
Duke Gardens also will offer a storytime from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Saturday. It’s free, no pre-registration is required.
Activities via WRAL.com
