Vernon Ellis: Bringing collision of cultures to the very core of our Festival

'Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.' With these words Christopher Columbus describes how his three small ships set sail towards the west on one of the most momentous journeys of all time.

It was to be a journey of discovery, an adventure, an exploration, an unsettling experience, for the world was not as it had seemed. It marked the beginning of the European colonisation of the globe and 500 years later we are still working through the consequences.

This year's Edinburgh International Festival takes as its theme the collision of cultures. What happens when one culture dominates and colonises another? What is the experience of the colonisers and the colonised? How is that manifested in artistic and cultural terms?

Explorations, presented by the Edinburgh International Festival in association with the British Council, is a series of nine events beginning today, which bring together academics, cultural commentators, performers, artists and writers to exchange ideas and understandings against the backdrop of some of the key performance events in the Festival.

As the Chair of the British Council I am delighted that we are working with EIF on Explorations. The British Council was a co-founder of the Edinburgh Festival through the efforts and contribution of the then Director in Scotland Henry Harvey Wood. When the Festival began in 1947, and memories of world conflict were all too present, there was a clear need for cultures to engage and converse.

Bringing diverse peoples together to share their knowledge and experience, their insights and interpretations of the world, was at the heart of what the British Council did then and it remains so today.

Working with EIF we have assembled a fascinating group of speakers who are guaranteed to provoke and challenge and leave us with a revised view of the world. Today I shall chair the first session with Professor Robert JC Young, a celebrated writer and academic who has written extensively on 'postcolonialism' and who will examine the question: 'What do we mean by postcolonial art?'

Tomorrow we will welcome the new chief executive of Creative Scotland to chair the second event in the series on 'Creative Innovation', with William Eddins, conductor of Opera de Lyon, John Collins artistic director of Elevator Repair Services and Professor Augustin Fernandez from the University of Newcastle.

Other subjects covered in the series include exclusion and exile in the New World, the ill-fated Scottish attempt to gain an imperial foothold in South America through the Darien venture, the contribution of female writers and artists to South American theatre and literature, and the emergence of lost narratives in artistic expression.

This series of talks and discussions is set to build on the success of the event last year when it was first introduced.Jonathan Mills, the Festival's director, has said that there is a growing appetite among Festival audiences for an engagement with the ideas and cultures represented in the Festival that goes beyond attendance at events.

People want to get under the skin of the works presented at the Festival and explore in more depth the concepts behind their expression. This series goes a long way to satisfying that demand for a deeper engagement.

Our core business in the British Council is to foster cultural relations between the peoples of the world and so it will be no surprise that I welcome this initiative and that I am particularly pleased that the British Council is continuing to make our contribution to the world's greatest cultural festival.