The latest expansion to the city council’s annual Inspiration Festival for Children and Young People, which is marking its fifth year and will run from October 28 to November 8, is a dedicated festival for secondary pupils at the Arches theatre.

“We’re running the youth programme because secondary schools liked the idea of having a separate programme,” says the council’s arts development officer and organiser, Maggie Singleton.

The Youth Fest at the Arches programme, which will run from October 31 to November 3, includes workshops in circus arts, Indian dance, creative writing and animation. It is also part of Glasgow’s First Nights programme which enables people to see shows at the Theatre Royal and at the Tron, among other venues, at reduced rates.

Music animateur Paul Rissmann and the BT Scottish Ensemble are running two day-long composition workshops for Standard grade and Higher music pupils during the festival. Composition skills are a key part of both exams. “The idea is to simplify the composition process,” says Mr Rissmann.

“We’re not creating the most complex piece of music in a day but we are giving the pupils an understanding of how a composer would use one element to create a new piece of music.”

The workshops will start with a performance by a string quartet from the ensemble, playing one movement. Then the pupils and musicians will split into small groups and devise a new composition.

Gianni Bisacca of Assemblia Teatro will be flying in from Turin to work on one of several Italian events at the festival and as part of an on-going policy to foster active links between the twin towns.

He will work with Glasgow artists on Il Lupo, a fusion of movement, drama and art involving P6 and P7 pupils from the four schools that feed into St Roch’s Secondary in Royston, where Italian is taught as part of a city-wide foreign languages pilot which has an Italian specialist working in the feeder primary schools. One of the schools is St Philomena’s Primary, where the three days of workshops will be held.

Il Lupo assistant director Benno Plassmann explains the inspiration behind the project. “It is based on work by Bologna based poet Giuliano Scabia, who also works extensively in the theatre and uses fairytale themes like the wolf and transfers them to a modern city setting.”

This is the starting point and, through the children’s input, the project will explore the city wolf.

Mr Bisacca will relate a wolf story in Italian and with the pupils doing non-verbal activities such as creating dens and masks and carrying torches, they will build up a dramatic story. The children will have some keywords to say but the idea is that they will get a greater understanding of the Italian narrative through the storytelling.

The workshops will not culminate in a theatre performance. “We try to pitch it in between play and theatre,” says Mr Plassmann. However, the story will be filmed on video for the children to see.

The plan is that the schools will link up with a primary school in Turin and they will see each other’s filmed stories. The hope is that the relationship will continue to develop, leading to an exchange trip by pupils during the 2006 winter Olympic Games, hosted by Turin.

Workshops are running now and throughout the festival at the Gallery of Modern Art for the young Goths and skaters who hang around the building at weekends but do not usually access the facilities. GOMA manager Victoria Hollows says the staff are trying to turn the gallery experience into a more positive one for the disengaged youngsters it attracts. “We invited them inside to give them their right to reply and we’re using the information they provided to devise future exhibitions,” she says.

A video and photographic record of the young people, called Nu, which was conceived by photographer Jim Poyner and filmmaker Graham MacIver, who are collectively known as nuArts, will run at the gallery from November 14.

Glasgow libraries are also listening to youngsters and planning additions to their collections.

Funded by Glasgow’s culture and leisure services department, all the Inspiration events will cost children pound;1 and there will be free buses from social inclusion partnership areas.

For details of the Inspiration Festival and Youth Fest at the Arches contact Maggie Singleton, tel 0141 287 9843.Gallery of Modern Art, tel 0141 229 1996