Manda Smith, left, helps her son Kymani, 6, build a pinewood race car at the 2014 Confabularryum event at Southwest Junior High School. At right is Azi Shirley, 4. Activities included hat making, pinewood car making and racing, design workshops and an air guitar workshop.

ConfabuLarryum, Lawrence’s annual festival of creativity, returns to Free State High School this weekend. And, organizers say, Saturday’s fourth annual event promises more exhibitors and visiting “creatives” than ever before.

The festival, once again hosted by Lawrence Public Schools and Callahan Creek, features a variety of hands-on activities and interactive workshops aimed at kids and adults alike. Patrick Kelly, the school district’s director of innovative learning, expects around 7,000 parents, students and educators to attend this year’s ConfabuLarryum, slated for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Free State, 4700 Overland Drive.

Kelly credits the event’s growth — ConfabuLarryum’s first iteration, in 2014, was a much smaller affair held at Southwest Middle School — with recent cultural shifts that have embraced creativity in its many forms.

“It used to be that creativity was something for the arts only, and we’re really starting to see that creativity can be technology, it can be building, it can be game-making,” Kelly says of ongoing trends like the Maker Movement. “There are so many ways to be creative.”

Attractions at this year’s event range from pottery wheel throwing, 3-D printing, laser cutting and interactive puppet theater to kids’ coding workshops, drones, robotics and a virtual-reality walk through an oil rig, among many others. Returning favorites include the “Nerdy Derby” pinewood car race, paper-hat making and giant Tesla Coils. This year, Kelly says, they’re “bigger and better” than ever, at 1.2 million volts.

As always, the festival remains 100 percent free.

“We felt it was important to expose students and teachers and parents to all the different types of creativity that are out there,” Kelly says of the goal behind ConfabuLarryum. “Many of the things you’ll see aren’t expensive but are great ways to be creative.”

During the event, folks can take a ride on the new $600 Segway miniPRO, while also checking out activities that could theoretically be re-created inexpensively at home or in the classroom, such as Saturday’s first-ever ConfabuLarryum egg-drop contest.

All the exhibitors and creatives involved in the festival, Kelly says, “come on their own dime” and provide their own materials in an effort to make ConfabuLarryum as accessible as possible.

And, although the festival has very purposely been developed as kid-friendly, there’s plenty for everyone to enjoy, Kelly says. He just hopes visitors will walk away from Saturday’s event feeling inspired to take on their own projects.

“A lot of times what we think of as a kid’s activity can really spark the imagination of an adult,” he says.

For a full schedule of events, check out ConfabuLarryum on Facebook.