Sigulda Children's and Youth Literature Festival 2025

From September 26 to 28, Sigulda will host the second Sigulda Children's and Youth Literature Festival (SCYLF), organized by the cultural center 'Sigulda Devons' and Sigulda Municipality. The festival's mission is to encourage children and youth to enjoy reading, to discover reading as an active pastime and hobby, which can be experienced together with friends and family.

This year, the festival's unifying theme will be nature, ecology, and the green lifestyle. The festival program is envisioned as an inspiring collection of events that will provoke reflection and conversation for both children and adults and perhaps encourage small but significant changes in daily life so that together we can create a better world.

The festival will take place over three days: on September 26, the festival's School Day will be held, inviting students from Sigulda Municipality to participate, while on September 27 and 28, Family Days will welcome visitors from all over Latvia with a wide-ranging program: meetings with book authors from Latvia, Ukraine, and Iceland, with illustrators, animation film artists, and directors. There will be creative workshops, exhibitions, animation film screenings, discussions and lectures for parents and educators, readings of unpublished works by authors, presentations of the latest children's books, and various activities in the urban environment. During the festival's Family Days, the 'Radix' hall in 'Sigulda Devons' will also host a book fair featuring Latvian publishers who publish children's books.

The backbone of the festival consists of the Author and Illustration programs, but by allowing children and youth to discover and experience how literary texts transform into other cultural fields, each festival includes a special program, this time focusing on animation. In the first Sigulda Children's and Youth Literature Festival, held in 2023, the author and illustration programs were complemented by theater and multimedia programs.

This year, the festival's creative team consists of three program curators:
children's book publisher, board member of the Latvian Publishers Association Alīse Nīgale, artist, and lecturer at the Latvian Academy of Art Rūta Briede, and animation film producer, chairperson of the Latvian Animation Association Sabīne Andersone.

The programs are designed to interact so that the events are interconnected, for instance, the Illustration program will feature three exhibitions under the unifying name 'Pētersons Archipelago,' showcasing the work of illustrator Reinis Pētersons, while the Animation program will include films for which Reinis Pētersons was the artist. Similarly, meetings and workshops with writers Agnese Vanaga and Luīze Pastore are included in the Author program, while the Animation program will screen films based on the motifs of these authors' books.

A special event will also be the creation of a mosaic with Ukrainian author and artist Katerina Mihalytsina, an exhibition of illustrations by Lithuanian illustration living classic Kęstutis Kasparavičius titled 'Kasparatorija,' and a meeting with Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason, who addresses ecological themes in his work. Also special will be an animation short film screening, featuring films that rarely reach audiences in Latvia. The screening will compile films about the interaction between humans and nature in various parts of the world—from snowstorms in northern Canada to droughts in central Africa. A detailed festival program will be announced at the beginning of September.

Already in the spring, along with the opening of the Sigulda Municipality Library's Outdoor Reading Room, the SCYLF book cabinet was inaugurated, which will remain in the vestibule of the cultural center 'Sigulda Devons' until the festival. In preparation for the festival, we invite you to explore the festival's book collection, reading them yourself and reading aloud to children.

The festival is organized by: the cultural center 'Sigulda Devons' and Sigulda Municipality, co-financed by the State Culture Capital Foundation in the target program 'Nationally Significant Events.'

Collaboration partners: Sigulda Municipality Library, Turaida Museum Reserve, Sigulda Municipality Creativity Center and Youth Initiative Center 'Mērķis,' DAP Gauja National Park Nature Center, Sigulda New Castle, Latvian Publishers Association, Latvian Animation Association, Latvian National Library's organized public engagement movement 'Restart for Reading.'

Information prepared by SCYLF creative director Alīse Nīgale.