This edition marks fifteen years of Hakawy, fifteen years of arts and creativity shaped by curiosity, play, and the shared joy of storytelling and performance, growing alongside your little ones and families.

For this milestone edition, we return to the very beginnings, exploring the earliest rhythmic patterns of life; the ways children first make sense of the world. The rhythms that live in the steady beat of the heart, in movement and breath, in games, lullabies, and stories that return night after night. This edition follows those natural pulses, inviting artists and audiences to listen, move, repeat, and respond together. Across music, theatre, dance, and visual performance, rhythm becomes a shared language, felt as much as it is seen or heard.

The festival finds its shape in the quiet choreography of nature: birds rising, circling, and moving together across the sky. Each child carries a unique curiosity and voice, yet discovers joy in collective motion, learning, playing, and growing alongside others.

It is a true pleasure for me and AFCA Arts Centre’s team to open this milestone edition of Hakawy. We hope it offers you and your family moments of wonder, connection, and delight and memories that linger long after the final applause.