Director wants mini-Festivals all year

Mini Edinburgh festivals will give arts lovers who miss out on the August extravaganza a chance to sample the city's cultural delights at other times of the year.

International Festival director Brian McMaster told The Observer that several weekends already boasted frenzied cultural activity and said these should now be marketed as tasters for the main event.

As a result of the Festival and its position as the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh was in the enviable position of having far more theatres, galleries and other arts venues than many much larger cities, said McMaster. The city had to take advantage of them.

'It is already happening,' he revealed. 'There are weekends when there is so much cultural activity and we just need to market those properly by bringing the tourist board, the Executive and the Scottish Arts Council together.'

Expertise honed hosting the August festivals meant many people were on hand to develop the new bite-sized festivals and, with the rapid growth of budget air travel, the demand was huge.

'People across the continent are looking for places to take short holidays. Edinburgh has the infrastructure to develop a series of weekend culture breaks,' he added.

The £7.4 million Festival had given Edinburgh an image as an artistic destination that was not being fully exploited, he said. 'All it would take is a bit of joined-up thinking.'

With thousands more people flooding into the city every August, concern has been raised that the festivals were outgrowing the city, but McMaster disagrees, believing the influx develops a unique Edinburgh atmosphere. The city council is planning a further two festivals, one for food and one for folk music, albeit at different times of the year.