Children step into politicians' shoes for festival performance at Edinburgh Festival

It’s a political debate like you’ve never seen before.

Young performers have stepped into the shoes of politicians for the day as part of their performance Elections at the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival.

Performer Reel told STV News: “It was about kids being politicians and acting all silly with neon colours and fun moustaches and it’s about showing what we want. We have a line where we say we should vote because it’s our future and we feel like adults are voting for our future even though it’s about us but they have more control than we do.”

Aimee added: “It was really fun and we were just looking at how we actually want to change the world and how we can make an impact on that.”

Reel enjoyed performing as part of Elections STV News

Artistic director Bishop May Down said: “The young people have such profound views about the world and they are really clued up and I think that’s not necessarily appreciated as much by adults, adults think that children can’t engage in political conversations and political thinking so I really wanted to challenge that and put them in a place where the power dynamic is a bit flipped and they can say what they want about the world.”

It’s just one of dozens of performances taking place at the festival – which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year.

Kicking off the nine-day event is Family Day at the National Museum of Scotland, which featured pop-up performances from swinging aerial artists, resilient mushrooms and party shrimps.

Noel Jordan from the festival said: “The vision of the Children’s Festival is to promote theatre and dance for young audiences and to really nurture children’s development through access to culture. Whether they come with a school’s performance or if they’re coming with their families on the weekends or in the evenings, we really want people to appreciate that art for children can be extremely high quality, risk taking, experimental and fun.”

The festival will run at locations across the city until June 1.