[Non-food] Cultural festival attractions: from classroom exhibits to stage events
Are you struggling to decide what to do for your school festival booth—other than food? Let’s energize the venue with unique ideas that are a bit different from the usual food stalls! From hands-on attractions like those at amusement parks, to photo spots, to performances your whole class can take on together, this article is packed with ideas that will win over your visitors.
We’ll also share helpful tips from preparation through day-of operations, so use this as a guide to create a booth that’s uniquely yours.
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- [Middle School] Cultural Festival Attractions: A roundup of popular exhibits, games, and stage performances
- Ideas for stage events and attractions that will liven up a school festival
- Attraction Ideas for School Festivals That Only High Schoolers Can Pull Off?
- Games that rival street festivals and variety shows!? Crowd-pleasers for school cultural festivals
- Ideas for class projects at the school festival: A roundup of popular attractions
- [For Elementary Schools] Recommended Exhibits and Recreational Activities for a Cultural Festival
- [By Genre] Cultural Festival / School Festival Booth Catalog [2026]
- [Cultural Festival / School Festival Theme] Carefully Selected High-Impact Recommended Phrases!
- Festival booth menu items that can be served without cooking and without using fire
- A catalog of recommended festival booths for school culture festivals, with ideas that will shine on social media.
Game (1–10)
Where’s Wally?
How about enjoying the classic puzzle picture book “Where’s Wally?” in the real world? You can list the characteristics of the correct person and have participants search for someone who matches those hints—it seems easy to understand.
If you set it up so that they look for the answer among people at the venue, it can serve as a nice accent to the entire school festival, so I recommend it.
Giving a small prize as proof to those who find the correct answer should also let them enjoy a sense of accomplishment.
Not only the real one, but careful attention to subtle differences in the decoys is also a key point for making the game more exciting.
Escape Game
A real escape game is perfect for anyone who wants to take on a large-scale attraction at a school festival.
It’s a game where participants solve school-related quizzes and puzzles as they try to escape from a classroom or gymnasium.
We recommend preparing a video themed around mystery, horror, or romance.
You can divide participants into small teams or make it a class-versus-class team competition.
It’s best to start with simple puzzles and gradually increase the difficulty.
The thrill comes from seeing whether they can reach the goal within the time limit.
bowling
This is a game that makes bowling—usually something you do at a dedicated facility—easy to play using a ball and plastic bottles.
You can use the bottles as pins just as they are, but decorating them with bright colors will make the game more enjoyable.
It’s also important to adjust the weight of the pins: depending on the ball you use and the players’ strength, fill the bottles with water or sand to make them harder to knock down.
It could also be fun to increase the number of pins beyond what real bowling has, so everyone can enjoy the satisfying feeling of toppling many at once.
Whac-A-Mole
It’s a game where you hammer mole targets that pop up randomly from holes in the field.
Even with a simple field made from cardboard with holes cut into it, the game can get exciting if you tweak factors like how fast the moles appear.
If you set it up so the moles pop out while watching the player’s movements, a bit of strategy emerges—like choosing spots that are harder to react to—which can make it even more engaging.
It’s also recommended to adjust the difficulty for each challenger by changing the number of holes or how many moles appear at the same time.
Real Life Game
Introducing a real-life Game of Life that’s sure to be a hit at your school festival.
Discuss together what kinds of spaces to create and build the board yourselves.
We recommend incorporating everyday situations as much as possible.
Spin the roulette and move forward the number of spaces shown.
Along the way, experience big events and try to increase your money.
The game ends when everyone reaches the goal.
Since it’s a real-life Game of Life, players actually stand on the spaces and move along with their friends.
Adding a few simple rules will make it even more exciting!
crane game
This is about enjoying the crane game—often associated with arcades—as something familiar made from cardboard.
You’ll build the main unit that holds the prizes and the claw arm; by fine-tuning details like size and shape, you can change the game’s difficulty.
The arm opens and closes using strings, and the way you attach these strings affects its strength, so it’s important to pay close attention there as well.
It might also be important to put thought into the prizes so players can concentrate and really aim for a win.
Giant Jenga
When you think of Jenga, you probably picture an indoor tabletop game—fun for the strategy, but with the impression of being a small, compact toy.
How about simply scaling Jenga up so you can enjoy a sensation that’s different from the usual way of playing? Each block can be made by assembling cardboard, and you should make sure they’re all exactly the same size before stacking them.
The interesting part is how the approach changes: how you should pull pieces out, how forces are applied—it all becomes a different kind of challenge.