Edinburgh may soon play host to a separate festival of youth arts to complement the International Festival and Fringe which open this weekend. The festival would build on youth companies which come to the city in August. For the second year, there will be a conference of the youth companies on the Fringe, organised by Youth International, a joint venture from Edinburgh council and St Bride’s Centre. Donald MacInnes, project manager, said: “Last year we agreed on how valuable the youth arts were. This year we want to do something practical and establish exchange links between companies.”

This year’s festival visitors include the Latvian Youth Theatre and the American High School Theatre Festival Edinburgh Youth Theatre will present A Migration of Souls, and A-level theatre studies pupils from Gordonstoun School will perform Asleep Under the Dark Earth, set in rural Wales in the 1930s. Bath Youth Theatre has a black comedy, Walking, and Melvyn Bragg is backing Renaissance Arts, a group of Cumbrian youngsters whose musical The Hired Man is based on Bragg’s Cumbrian Trilogy.

Edinburgh preview, pages 26-27