Seattle’s free, city-block-spanning art walk WalkDontRun is back for its second year on Saturday, Sept. 19, and this time it’s opening with a dedicated stretch for families.
The all-day event turns roughly 20 blocks of downtown Seattle — from Westlake Park to Occidental Square — into an open-air stage for more than 200 artists working in music, dance, sculpture, and street performance. The even runs from runs from 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m and during that time all that art exposure for kids is free.
From WalkDontRun 2025 event (Photo by Marina Boichuk)
The walk-and-see art day doubles as the launch of Arts + Culture Week Seattle, which loads eight Seattle neighborhoods with free or discounted dance performances, concerts, art shows, film screenings, fashion shows and hands-on making sessions. The citywide festival aims to put more people — kids included — in front of working artists, both established and up-and-coming, across nearly every creative discipline and continues through Sept. 26.
New this year at WalkDontRun is a kids’ launch at Westlake Park from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. before the broader route opens up. The lineup there includes a face-painting booth run by Doodle Girls Face Art, an art-making activity from Seattle Paint Party, a walk-through optical exhibit billed as a camera obscura, and a session with the performer known as Aurora Flux, the “clown oracle.” HezzaFezza and the Phinney Ridge Steel Band are set to perform live during that window as well.
Kids aren’t limited to watching, either. At one stop, Just Little Guys leads a build-it-yourself sculpture session where kids assemble a googly-eyed figure modeled on Seattle’s Hammering Man landmark. A few blocks over, another station teaches a printmaking technique rooted in kapa, the Hawaiian tradition of decorating barkcloth.
The rest of the route leans more toward watching than joining in: dance, brass bands, textile art, street games and sculpture installations popping up in odd corners downtown.
Full route details, artist lineups, and updates are posted at walkdontrun-sea.org.
