Imaginate Festival: Big ideas for small people

The festival, which is aimed at children and young people, has reached the milestone anniversary almost without anyone noticing. The days of a few tents in Inverleith Park are long gone.

And although the programme kicked off earlier this week, this weekend there is still plenty for parents to get their kids along to - and perhaps start a lifelong interest in theatre.

Today and tomorrow, families can drop in from noon to the Traverse Theatre cafe in Cambridge Street for free performances that promise to be packed with "fun, imagination and a little sprinking of quirkiness" - or you could just be amazed at the clowning around and acrobatic skills of Canadian Jamie Adkins' Circus Incognitus.

Also today, but at the Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh, there's a chance to wallow in nostalgia with Mr Benn as Tall Stories - the creators of The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom stage shows - present a musical production of the television series to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

Tomorrow you can still catch a production of the multi-award winning show White at the Church Hill Theatre Studio in Morningside and in the same venue, the puppet show Potato Needs a Bath.

Director of the Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival, Tony Reekie, admits that the 21 years since the launch in 1990 have seen a lot of changes.

"It has come a long way since it began in a collection of tents in Inverleith Park - a style of theatre which worked brilliantly in places like Canada, but not so well in rainy Edinburgh," he laughs.

"Since then, we have worked closely with venues in Edinburgh to produce a mix of home-grown work and high profile productions from overseas, although this year we are doing some productions outside again - in the Botanic Gardens - so things have come full circle."

He says that given the amount of money invested in young people's theatre - around 1 million - Scotland "punches well above its weight".

"Scotland has about half the amount invested in Wales and around a tenth of the money spent in countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, but the quality of the work produced here is world-class," he says.

Indeed the festival does bring the best and most exciting work to Edinburgh before touring the rest of Scotland - and Imaginate works all year round to promote and develop the performing arts for young people in Scotland, with as wide an economic and geographical reach as possible."If you can get people in to see the work, you start to get away from the notion that children's theatre is about pantomimes and nativity plays," he adds. "It's about that whole feeling you get, when you come out of a play or a performance with your children, and they are thrilled by it, excited and enthusiastic about what they have just seen and participated in. We need more of that - it's the right of every child to have those experiences."

• For more information visit www.imaginate.org.uk or to book tickets contact the Traverse Theatre on 0131-228 1404