Wheel of fortune: Big in Falkirk has transformed the town

BIG IN FALKIRK CELEBRATES AN unlikely success story today. Ten years ago the street theatre and music festival was founded from scratch, in a city hardly known as an arts hub. It has flourished in a surprising way, drawing crowds of about 100,000 people and becoming a major feather in the cap of Falkirk Council. What's the secret?

Ian Smith of Mischief La Bas, the quirky walking performance company, has been working with the festival's director, Neil Butler, since the first days. BiF is the only festival of its kind, Smith says, that allows large-scale premieres of the kind of outdoor work that his company specialises in, acting as a platform for European tours. It's also not patronising, it's nicely situated between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and it "helps that it's free".

"It's extremely accessible to the public and the public do engage with it," he says. One year Mischief La Bas took the Falkirk Wheel, with eccentric tour guides who could point out sights like a field of inflatable kangaroos. "We are very grateful to be allowed to interfere with the public and I think the public like being interfered with," he says.

The festival, run by UZ Events, has brought McFly, Snow Patrol and Sandi Thom to the town. This year's headliners are Capercaillie and Stereo MCs, while Homecoming 2009 makes its presence felt with a pyrotechnic finale, Burns is Back.

Butler set up BiF for the millennium, after a long search for an outdoor theatre festival for Scotland. He speaks of warm relations with Falkirk Council, who have stumped up half of its roughly 400,000 budget. "The council was incredibly protective and really keen to create something special," he says, "and understood how important arts and culture could be in changing people's perception of the place."

Callendar Park is also spectacularly well located, he says, with 3.4 million people within 40 minutes' driving distance. A big boost for the first year came when Radio One broadcast from the site. "Last year 25,000 people came from Glasgow and Edinburgh to enjoy Big in Falkirk, which is quite remarkable."

With backers including the Scottish Arts Council, he's proud that Scots companies like Boilerhouse have premiered works that have gone on to festivals worldwide. "They've taken the name of Falkirk across Europe," he says. "Over the last ten years we have shown how the town's reputation can be transformed, the quality of life for its citizens enhanced by culture." While Butler says he's nervous of measuring culture with economics, he believes that with the Falkirk Wheel as a hub, the festival has helped push up Falkirk house prices.

This being an outdoor festival, the most serious hazard has always been the weather – after one major wash-out it was christened "Wet in Falkirk". "There have been a few horrendous years," says Smith. "One was fairly horrendous. We were traipsing people through boggy woodland to see about 18 installations, but everyone stuck with it and ploughed through. They didn't run off, they put plastic bags on their heads and stuck with it."

This year, as he turns 50, Smith has gone back to his roots, with two solo street pieces, Beastly Beauty and Hurty Gurty. "I wanted to make sure I can still cut the mustard ," he says. "Neil and I were both doing this thing 30 years ago, so I wanted to keep my hands dirty."