Imaginate:
The 2021 Edinburgh International Children’s Festival: Family Encounters Programme

Imaginate presents the annual Edinburgh International Children’s Festival. In March 2020 we had to make the very difficult decision to cancel our May 2020 festival, as the global pandemic took hold. Like many arts organisations we began the complicated process of un-producing a large-scale event and then making plans for the following year. To give you a sense of what was involved, the Children’s Festival presents around 14 venue-based productions over one week, from Scotland and across the globe. The Festival always opens with a free day-long event for families at the National Museum of Scotland, featuring innovative pop-up performances, arts activities and creative happenings. 

At first, we naively thought we could re-book all of our artists and companies into the exact same slots for 2021. However, by December 2020 it was evident that this would not be the case and that we would need to make some drastic decisions. These decisions would affect both the livelihoods of artists in our community and also, importantly, the children, young people and families who make up our audience and who had been unable to access to live arts events for a significant period already.

As Festival Director it was a challenging career moment. We decided to postpone our venue-based theatre and dance programme for a further year and to redirect the majority of the festival budget into commissioning work either for online delivery, or for a new programme of outdoor events across the city called ‘Family Encounters’. We took the one-day concept of Scottish artists performing for free at the National Museum of Scotland and expanded this across the city over four days using outdoor locations. We knew that this pivot came with considerable risk. Several decades ago we had moved the Children’s Festival from a cluster of tents in Inverleith Park to indoor theatres, due to extreme weather and flooding. Producing outdoor events in Scotland at any time of the year is a risky business. Now here we were in 2020, in the middle of a global health epidemic, planning multiple outdoor events to ensure that children and families could have access to inspiring theatre and dance after two long years of hibernation. 

The main venue we selected for the expanded Family Encounters programme was the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, a brand-new partnership for us. Family Encounters 2021 was the first in-person event run by any of the Edinburgh festivals since the onset of the pandemic. It took place on 29-30 May and 5-6 June 2021.

The response to Family Encounters was incredibly encouraging: tickets sold out in days and feedback was overwhelmingly positive. A survey was emailed to everyone who booked (as the event was free but ticketed). Elements that people enjoyed the most were: to watch live performances again, to be outdoors, and to experience something as a family. Many comments praised the setting of the Botanic Garden, the quality of performances and the helpfulness of staff.  With 7,344 bookings across 4 days, we know of no Covid-19 cases linked to attendance – this alone was incredible. 

Hearing directly from families that live theatre was high on their enjoyment agenda was a real gift to our team and confirmation that what we do matters. Families’ comments included:

‘Absolutely fantastic experience. We travelled up from London and it was well worth it. Perfect for our four-year-old twins.’

‘Seeing the enjoyment on the face of my grandson’s friend who had never participated in a live performance before.’

Winning the Best Family Arts Activity award is an incredible validation of our work and a celebration of this unique moment in Imaginate’s history. It also contributes to raising awareness across the UK of what Imaginate does and of the artists that we work with.

Image credits: Ruth Armstrong

18 January 2022

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