The Ultimate Guide to Vivid Sydney with Kids

As winter descends upon Sydney the city comes alive with Australia’s largest event and the world’s largest festival of light, music and ideas, Vivid Sydney. 

Spanning 22 nights, Vivid thrusts Sydney into the international spotlight, attracting over two million attendees to the event each year. But is Vivid Sydney with kids a good idea?

The Ultimate Guide to 2022 Vivid Sydney with Kids

Vivid Sydney 2022 will be celebrated from Friday 27 May to 18 June 2022 from 6.00 pm – 11.00 pm each night.

We have been attending Vivid Sydney with kids since its debut and have learned a thing or two over the years (thanks to mistakes over our first few visits) which have helped us to ensure that we have had an amazing adventure at Vivid Sydney with kids over the last few years.

Vivid Sydney can be an overwhelming excursion if you haven’t done your research. Never fear, we are here to provide you with all the details you need to know ahead of the celebration including our suggestions on which installations to visit with the kids.

Before You Go To Vivid Sydney

The best Vivid Sydney evening is experienced with a little planning. You will need to work out which precinct you are heading to in advance, the best evening to attend, what to wear, how to get there, and where to eat. We hope this guide will help you to plan.

When to Visit 2022 Vivid Sydney with Kids

Knowing when to visit Vivid Sydney with kids can be difficult to predict with the weather often playing havoc on even the best-made plans.

Weather aside, our general experience is that weekday evenings have a reduced crowd as does the evening of the State of Origin (Saturday 8 June 2022).

What to Wear to Vivid Sydney

Vivid Sydney is celebrated at the end of autumn and the first weeks of winter. The weather can be unpredictable, offering a clear starry sky on some evenings, and windy, wet days on others. Regardless, as the sun goes down, it does get quite cool so we suggest rugging up against the weather.

Some sites will recommend taking an umbrella. Juggling kids and an umbrella or two can be quite difficult. To ensure mobility at each installation, raincoats or ponchos are a better idea.

Using a baby carrier is also something parents may like to consider. The crowds at Vivid Sydney can be quite thick making it difficult to weave a pram to each installation.

Where is 2022 Vivid Sydney?

Each year Vivid Sydney gets bigger and better, adding locations and increasing what you can see and do across the celebration.

In 2022 Vivd Sydney will be celebrated at: Barangaroo, Carriageworks, Central Station and The Goods Line, Circular Quay and the Rocks, Darling Harbour, Darling Quarter, Darling Square, Luna Park, Sydney CBD and Surrounds, Sydney Opera House, Taronga Zoo, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and Walsh Bay.

Precincts and Installations for Kids

Every year Vivid Sydney boasts an array of installations across the city. As the event has evolved, the locations have grown and there has been an increasing focus on ensuring they are inclusive.

From what we have seen so far, this year will be the best yet! We have outlined a number of installations below that we think your Vivid Sydney with kids experience is a good one.

Barangaroo

Nura

Immerse yourself in a soul-warming glow. This mass installation of 150 colour-changing light pillars in Barangaroo Reserve presents a contemporary imagining of dendroglyphs, designs carved in the bark of living trees.

Corpi Celesti

When humans set foot on the moon, it united people across the world with a shared hope for the future. This installation imparts the same sense of wonder as you walk through the bright inflatable planets of our solar system.

ChronoHarp

In this colourful, walk-through sound and light installation, the beauty of the harp is transformed into a multi-player experience.

Central Station and The Goods Line

We Dream the City

Enter a collective dreamscape of city-making. Filmic encounters with the city’s past are woven into one of Sydney’s most iconic corridors, The Goods Line. Fragments of lost worlds and forgotten faces flicker across the back of the Powerhouse Museum, animating visions of our city streets through time. As you stroll past, the projections become a 130m long meditation on the many ideals, innovations and transformations that have shaped Sydney in its emergence as a modern metropolis.

Shard

Viewable from all sides, the giant shards act as mirrors by day then illuminate by night to display animations inside each mirrored form. As you move around the objects, you’ll experience infinite reflections and intricate animated performance sequences that reveal stories and songs from Arnhem Land.

Frankly, My Dear…

See Frank Gehry’s design for the UTS School of Business in a whole new light. By illuminating its windows with colour-changing cove lights and wall grazers, Sinclair accents the crumpled-looking exposed brick form with jewel bright hues. 

A Mirrored City

This playful installation invites you on a journey through many vignettes of Sydney life. Weave your way through a series of building-like forms covered in dichroic film. As light dances across the mirror-finished structures, further investigation reveals enticing scenes and soundscapes within each one’s viewing windows.

Vivid Reflections

Set in the western forecourt of Central Station, this interactive projection experience uses motion capture technology to turn your movements into animated action, then beams them onto the landmark clock tower.

Convergence

This year, the unused Goods Line tunnel – a space that is largely unknown and alien to even the most well-travelled Sydneysider – becomes a portal to a spectacular convergence of lights, lasers and smoke effects that will leave guests wondering where the tunnel leads and what they’ll discover as they journey deeper underground.

Manta Rain

This kinetic light and sound sculpture draws inspiration from the instantly recognisable shape of the manta ray and the mystical rainstick. The sculpture moves, mimicking the fins and organic movement of sea creatures. It explores ‘flow’ using parametric form, movement, and the incorporation of mechanical sound elements.

Circular Quay and the Rocks

Crowded Cadmans

Experience a 3D animated artwork that comes straight from the imaginations of Sydney-based artists living with a disability.

Temple

Comprising both superscale visuals and sculptural elements, this monumental installation is a temple to nature with the power to immerse us in the present moment. Temple’s slow motion film and reflection pool offers a contemplative sanctuary on the Light Walk.

Crosswalk This Way

Playing with the notion that sometimes we need to snap out of our routines and find an alternate route, the light artists have reimagined the familiar ‘don’t walk/walk’ instructions of pedestrian crosswalks to introduce new suggestions that are much more fun. 

Note: No existing crosswalk lights have been changed. Instead several modified crosswalk lights are installed throughout the festival site on light poles away from any roads for safety reasons

Kiamorphia

Be enthralled as Kia unveils a kinetic 3D spectacle featuring the latest digital video technology. The superscale installation has a captivating, trance-like motion that aligns with Kia’s ‘Movement that Inspires’ brand purpose.

Point of View

This is the first light installation to be projected on the façade of 47 George Street and takes the concept of mural painting and celebrates the process as much as the finished work.

Future Natives

Dotted all along the walk from Circular Quay to Central Station, placement of the birds creates a continual visual thread connecting all artworks, even the secluded ones, and provides a scavenger hunt / wayfinding experience to aid and encourage visitors to explore and see more of the festival.

Our Connected City

2022 will see both sides of Sydney Harbour Bridge emblazoned with hundreds of colour changing lights. In a ribbon of light, colours pulse from the northern end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge across its world-famous span, through The Rocks, around Circular Quay and onto the Sydney Opera House forecourt.

Fall

Stop for a moment, watch as drips of light form and fall – as if from a leaking tap – before splashing to the ground below. Elegant in its simplicity, the subtle unpredictability of each drop this installation encourages a greater awareness of our relationship with water.

First Light

First Light will be shown on screens throughout the Light Walk each night of the festival as an Acknowledgement of Country. 

Ninget Universe

Welcome to a fantastical realm bursting with myriad creatures, inventions and planets as imagined by an 11-year-old boy growing up in our awe-inspiring city. Together, Luca’s colourful consortium celebrates all walks of life and is a metaphor for diversity and integration.

One Big Backyard

This delightfully playful 3D mapped projection explores the ties that bind us – the people, the places, the stories of Sydney – in a celebration of the city’s soul.

Endless Love

Positioned between the Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House, the arc of the letters speaks to those landmarks and the role that ingenuity and creativity have played in the creation of our vibrant and energetic city.

88 Bars

Consisting of 88 vertical neon tubes, this installation encapsulates memories of the ‘gateway to King Cross’ with its mesmerising, monochromatic red glow.

Bloom

In this installation, each ‘flower’ comprises six LED strips radiating from a central point. The strips arc in kinetic curves that splay petals of light onto the grass. As they simulate the process of budding, this constant dynamic mirrors the ongoing bloom of flora throughout our landscapes.

Equilateral

This futuristic installation at the Overseas Passenger Terminal features a canopy of kinetic equilateral triangles. In unison, they create an amazing, geometric lighting display that develops into infinite patterns, changing at every glance

Lighting of the Sails

Each year an internationally-renowned artist is commissioned to create an original artwork for projection onto the Sydney Opera House that captures the spirit of the iconic landmark recognised as the cultural epicentre of Australia.

Earth Deities

Towering over a corner of Hickson Road Reserve, the contemporary sculpture is positioned between famous Sydney landmarks – the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the expressive grin of Luna Park’s entrance – and reflects upon Sydney as a global, multicultural city with plural histories.

STRYBX 2032

This time-travelling portal features young writers, poets and community participants on a collaborative digital canvas designed for creativity and storytelling in public precincts.

New York Sunday

Be transfixed as majestic cliffs of colour shape-shift and morph across the Museum of Contemporary Art. 

For Sydney with Love

A master of colour, Ken Done captures the joy of Sydney like no other artist and this vibrant animation projected onto Customs House shows how his beloved city informs all his work. It is a story of optimism, colour, and sheer delight.

Dell Youniverse

Positioned alongside Sydney’s iconic Customs House in Circular Quay, Dell has created an immersive experience that will transport you into the Youniverse of well-known illustrator Andrew Archer and proud Gadigal street artist Jeswri.

Sharing the Same Life Essence

Sharing the Same Life Essence will be shown on all four pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from 5:40pm nightly as part of Vivid Sydney’s First Light ceremony and performance that acknowledges our First Nations culture.

Gravitational Grid 

Through light, sound and a multi-sensory narrative, the sculpture draws us together and speculatively captures the alternative trajectories in the life cycle of stars.

Who the Heck is Billy Blue?

This entertaining animated projection spills the beans on the life of William ‘Billy’ Blue. Follow the unpredictable journey of arguably Australia’s first celebrity. From sugar-thieving chocolate entrepreneur to chained convict to Governor Macquarie’s Harbour Watchman then Ferry Master who was granted 80 acres of prime Blues Point real estate, Billy’s is a story of ingenuity, opportunism and crashing through countless barriers.

Darling Harbour

Vivid Kids @ Tumbalong Park

Make tracks to Tumbalong Park for 5pm each Saturday during the festival to our kids’ fun zone. See the stage light up with fab fresh FREE acts loved by children of all ages.

Saturday 28 May

The Vegetable Plot – Winners of the 2019 International Songwriting Competition Children’s Category burst onto the stage playing earthy, roots music full of fun characters and true tales. 

Saturday 4 June

Teeny Tiny Stevies – ARIA award winning children’s music group bring us their cheery folk-pop tunes that cleverly cover social messages in their inimitably fun, relatable manner.

Saturday 11 June

To be announced

Saturday 18 June 

Justine Clarke – Playschool host and Queen of the Kids pumps up the fun factor with her playful and lighthearted show full of sing-along, dance-along songs.

The Windspinners

Mandylights elevates these commonplace garden ornaments into six large-scale kinetic sculptures that evoke a sense of nostalgia and childlike wonder.

Halo

Shaped through audience participation, Halo is an innovative and interactive installation brings you together with fellow festival-goers in a shared moment of spontaneous music making.

Across the Seas

This evocative 3D mapped projection takes us back to a time when migration by ship was the most common mode of travel and Sydney was a coveted destination.

Checkmate

Games bring us together. They’re fun, they put us to the test and reveal our skills. By supersizing the sculptural pieces, this installation connects and challenges visitors, bringing a whole new level of wonder and joy to gameplay. Who’ll take the crown?

Twenty Seven

This series of illuminated cylinders with a cellular structure display 27 emotions felt during the pandemic and beckon you to share your feelings out loud, with light reactions that pulse and dance through each form.

Sydney Infinity

Darling Harbour will be the setting for the largest ‘liquid and light show’ ever seen in Australian history, created specifically for Vivid Sydney and featuring hundreds of multi-textured jets and nozzles fan water into shifting shapes and expressive fountain and an impressive array of 48 compressed-air water cannons – that can blast water up to 80 metres into the air. 

Every evening throughout 2022 Vivid Sydney, two  tightly choreographed shows will play on rotation provided a supersized 360 degree experience which will be visible all around the south end of Darling Harbour as well as from Pyrmont Bridge, high in surrounding city buildings, and along the floating walkway that runs directly through the heart of the harbour

This amazing experience reminds us all why we love Sydney – to infinity and back.

Resonance

Using a geometric array of rotating convex mirrors suspended beneath the freeway overpass provides an unexpected multi-sensory spectacle for people below.

Macula

Expect Macula to be one of this year’s crowd favourites given it provides an extraordinary backdrop for selfies and videos. Wander through a spiralling tunnel of bamboo and get a sense of the versatility and beauty of one of the world’s most regenerative natural resources. Listen to the soundscape that fuses ephemeral woodwind instruments with sound from the Australian bush.

Darling Quarter

Progressum

Built around a precise spatial synchronicity and featuring a state of the art, three dimensional IOSONO sound system and dazzling lighting array, Progressum is an exercise in sonic and visual immersion.

Bump in the Night

This interactive light installation draws inspiration from our daily encounters with a bold mother nature. This artwork resembles a peaceful campsite, with muffled snores heard from within the tents. As you walk through the campground, any noise you make could wake up the campers, resulting in hand torches being waved about.

Darling Square

Tomorrow’s Blossoming

Like a meadow in bloom, this mass installation of light flowers is comprised of beautifully intricate blossoms designed with the input of hundreds of Sydney primary school students. Each child’s bubbly cheerful character and positive outlook on our future is effervescent and imprinted on their creation. As you walk through this field, you’ll make small discoveries as you take a closer look at individual flowers, seeing the unique form and personality of each one. 

Luna Park

Lighting & Showtime performances will take place 3 times per night on each and every night of the festival. In-between rides, watch or dance and sing along to our exclusive Showtime Performances by talented professional performers – tailored and choreographed in conjunction with the NEW 2022 light installation. 

Taronga Zoo

Vivid at Taronga Zoo has been our go-to place at Vivid Sydney with kids each year as entry is ticketed and capped ensuring that we never feel claustrophobic in the crowd which is often the case at the events in Circular Quay.

Wild Lights at Taronga is an opportunity to explore the Zoo after dark on an illuminated night walk, all whilst connecting with wildlife and conservation.

The 2022 Vivid Sydney event brings back to Taronga the Mini Beasts collection, Jellyfish Bloom, animal lanterns from 14 different captivating species as well as the addition of three, never seen before, purpose-built, inclusive installations which will connect the wildlife of the land, of the sky and of the sea. 

Food and beverage outlets will be open around Taronga Zoo Sydney during the evening, as well as exciting NEW Vivid-only food and beverage specials on the menus.

Hot top: book the Sky Pass so you can view the event from above. It is an additional $4.95 per person (spaces are limited, infants under 4 years of age go free), but worth it for the experience. 

Running from Friday 27 May to Saturday 18 June 2022. Every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday as well as the public holiday on Monday 13 June.

Walsh Bay

Celestial

 Inspiring ideas of unity and interconnectedness, this playful installation prompts conversation and contemplation beneath its saturated neon glow. Kinetic motors and an abstract soundtrack add to Celestial’s dynamic movement. The overall effect is mesmerising by day and night, an experience for young and old to enjoy.

Ephemeral Oceanic

Bubbles! Bubbles! Everywhere! Step onto a floating boardwalk that weaves between 150 larger-than-life illuminated spheres and experience the pure joy of effervescence. It’s as if Walsh Bay has been transformed into a giant bubble bath. This playful work appeals to our sense of childlike wonder through the ethereal quality of bubbles.

Light Sentinels

The illuminated petals of these giant kinetic flowers create a canopy of colour that spills across the landscape and onto passers-by. Weave amongst them and marvel as the petals mechanically unfurl, revealing a vibrant internal ecosystem.

GLOW Sydney Zoo

Whilst GLOW Sydney Zoo is a festival all on its own, it is an option for families in Western Sydney who are looking for something closer to home. 

The event features over 50 light sculptures, a GLOW ice rink, Food Trucks, numerous selfie spots, a tunnel of light, the KIIS Eye Ferris Wheel, a bunch of rides, Glowy Golf, and more!

Check our Guide to Glow Sydney Zoo with Kids for all the details. 

Top Tips from Sydney Parents

We headed across to the Family Travels Guide group community to ask our members what their biggest tips were for attending Vivid Sydney with kids.

Umbrellas are bad in crowds – even if you think the crowds will be less in the rain, people still turn up. And you end up being poked by the spokes, or the kids can’t see over the tops. So – avoid the crowded areas when raining! ~ Kate

Don’t try and get on a train at Circular Quay… you are better off walking to another one. ~ Milly

Comfy shoes and baby carriers are a must. Don’t forget there are other sites such as Chatswood and the Zoo in previous years. ~ Lucille

Don’t go on the weekend… mid-week is so much easier ~ Mandy

We found State of Origin night was a good time to go because everyone is at home watching the football ~ Kate

If budget permits, I recommend staying overnight or at the weekend. It was much less stressful and enjoyable! We stayed at the Intercontinental Sydney which was a very convenient location. Or get in early if you’re driving! Comfy shoes, make reservations for dinner, and get the kids to go to the toilet before you head out lol! And be patient- it is busy! ~ Rosa

Getting to Vivid Sydney

Public Transport is the ideal way to get to Vivid Sydney. We have tried a combination of different methods over time, some with good results. We have attempted to incorporate suggestions for travel into each precinct summary to help you out. Public transport continues to be the most popular and easiest method of transport.

Transport experiences from Sydney with Kids

Don’t presume that because you caught the rivercat from Parramatta that you can catch it back…. we lined up for the last boat of the night and even though we had return tickets there was far too many people wanting to get on. We then had to get train and taxi to where we had left our car (very expensive) and what made it even more frustrating is that they lock the gates to the car park after the final boat for the night… we had to pay $80 or something ridiculous to get someone from security out to give us access to our vehicle which had also been given a parking ticket as we had overstayed our time paid for as we had not obviously not planned to be stranded at Circular Quay. ~ Jodie

Parked the car on a Saturday at husbands car space near Circular Quay thinking we’d have a quick getaway with a 5 month old. Went get the car to find only minutes before police had shut down the street in front of his office until Monday! ~ Malia

Where to Eat at Vivid Sydney with Kids

During Vivid Sydney, knowing where to head to grab something to eat is a must. Areas within Vivid precincts usually require a booking, and others are generally crowded.

Little Munch is my go-to website to find a place to eat during Vivid. Listed in precincts, their guide provides all the information I need.

Vivid Sydney with kids can be an incredible adventure. Plan your transport and precincts carefully and you will have an incredible adventure.

Please note, current images via Vivid Sydney

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