Edinburgh children’s festival to tackle suicide suicide, mental health, loneliness and dyslexia

Shows tackling suicide, mental health, dyslexia and portrayals of young women in the media are to be staged at Scotland's leading festival for children and young people.

Twelve productions will be staged during the nine-day Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, which will also explore themes of isolation, loneliness and “bodies that are different from the norm”.

The Scottish Government is providing £115,000 in funding for specially-commissioned mental health-related work to be premiered during the theatre, dance and film event in May.

Projects include The Hope River Girls, which will focus on a group of schoolgirls who begin behaving strangely and mirroring each other, attracting the attention of parents, teachers and even the national news.

The show is said to combine choreography, video and text to examine “how something as natural as teenage girls coming of age can become wholly unnatural and a subject of national scrutiny”.

I Am Tiger will follow the story of a girl who is given an unusual pet from her parents the week after her brother takes his own life. The festival, which will be urging anyone affected by the show to contact the Samaritans hotline, said it was partly inspired by the fact that suicide is now the number one killer of men under 40 in the UK.

The programme also includes Sound Symphony, an interactive sensory performance created for and with autistic young people. Billed as “a playful journey through sound and music”, the show is said to allow each audience member to feel music through their whole body.

Birdboy is billed as a trip inside the head of a young boy who wishes he was a bird so he could fly away from all his worries.

The festival said the show would deal with “loneliness, how easy it is to retreat from others, how exhausting it can become, and how we must learn to accept ourselves before being able to reconnect with others”.

Little Murmur, which is billed as an honest, funny and heartfelt journey about the trials and tribulations of living with dyslexia, is said to be based on the true story of a child who one day realises they have been misspelling their own name.

The festival will also be screening short films featuring a profoundly deaf four-year-old girl born into a middle-class family, dancers who were forced to perform on their own during lockdown and choreography inspired by a bespoke prosthetic leg.

Festival director Noel Jordan said: “This year’s festival is full of special moments for children and their families – experiences that will enable young people to reconnect and encourage them to wish, desire and aspire beyond their own lives and immediate neighbourhoods, into their potential future selves.

The Hope River Girls, which will be staged as part of the Edinburgh International Children's Festival, will focus on teenage girls, their behaviours and the way society views them. Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic

"Communal connectedness is crucial in the lives of children and young people and never more timely than this current period in our history.”

Culture minister Neil Gray MSP said: “We’re delighted to support the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival’s line-up this year with £115,000 from the Festivals Expo Fund.

"The festival has a well-deserved reputation for showcasing the very best in children’s theatre and dance productions from around the world.

"It’s important that children of all ages have the opportunity to experience these national and international multi-artform productions, which can ignite their imaginations and creativity and contribute to their well-being.”