CHILDREN love art, dance and storytelling – and yet so often along the way to adulthood that passion and creative expression can be lost.

Now, as part of its goal to bring arts and music opportunities to the area, Grassington Festival has joined forces with Upper Wharfedale Secondary School for the fourth year.

Ten GCSE art students have crafted an installation, entitled Welcome Waymarkers, which will adorn Grassington Square during the festival fortnight, June 17 to July 2.

The Square will also host a multitude of free family-friendly music, dance and entertainment events.

Taking this year’s festival theme of Convergence – All Roads Lead to Grassington, the students have created unique sculptures under the leadership of artist Carine Brosse, with help from fellow artist David Ashby and the school's head of art Frazer Hayton.

The sculptures celebrate diversity, colourfully depicting different international flags. Assembled in the pig pens to the south of the square, they will symbolically welcome the world to Grassington.

The festival will start on Saturday, June 18, with a carnival procession, showcasing the creative efforts of local primary schoolchildren and residents at Gills Top Care Home. This year, flocks of migrating birds will take to the skies led by the funky rhythms of Loud Minority Samba Band and Dales Jam, who will head up a day of free song and dance entertainment.

Saturday, June 25, sees the Square play host to three Yorkshire Festival pieces, Stopgap’s Bill & Bobby, Stefano di Renzo’s Hold On, and Company Chameleon’s Of Man and Beast. There are also several free dance workshops for all the family.

On July 2, there is more free family entertainment in the Square with music from Buckden Singers, Skipton Ukulele Club, the Festival Choir with the Halle Community Choir and Voices of Craven, Highly Strung - Grassington’s own uke group - and Grand Old Uke of York.

And Sunday, June 26, offers families the perfect opportunity to have a little crazy fun together, with Grassington Festival’s first-ever Rainbow Challenge. The idea is to run, skip, gallop or walk the four-mile route, passing through the several colour stations which will shower participants with different colour paint powders.

The walk concludes with a colour party where the fun continues with Yorkshire crepes from The Flip Side; tea, coffee and cake from Cobble Kitchen in a 1955 Citroen van ‘Marcel’, and a pop-up juice bar from Keelham Farm Shop. There will be music from Gary Stewart and Otley Ukes – and if that’s not enough there will be fun powder throws.

From Monday, June 20, the festival will host free daily picnics and opening the entertainment will be seasoned spoken word artists, A Firm of Poets, with a quick-fire, engaging, unpredictable, sometimes funny, but always thought-provoking set.

Following a 22-date national tour last year, the Firm have become a nationally recognised spoken word organisation, garnering rave reviews from fellow performance poets John Cooper Clarke, Mike Garry and Mark Grist.

Also taking part in this year’s festival picnics will be Grassington’s own legendary performance poet, Ray Snape. Holly Redford Jones, Baquoun Dance, The Bramble Napskins and Perfect Fourth.

Running throughout the fortnight is 2015 Turner Prize nominee Helen Peyton’s Rainy Day Project – hosted in the Ladies Room at Grassington’s Festival Hall – which will be a veritable festival of mending, swapping, finishing, recycling and upcycling.

One of Helen’s projects will be to facilitate the creation of a collaborative sculpture out of the clutter which is donated to the project.

Helen said: “The first festival weekend we are hosting a de-clutter amnesty and are hoping that people will clear out their cupboards and let go of all that stuff that might come in handy and bring it to us. Everyone is welcome to come along, with or without things, and help in the creative process. I see the sculpture as being the mascot for de-cluttering and it is something that will gradually take shape throughout the festival fortnight.”

The final treat for children and families is an outdoor production of Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World – adapted for stage by David Wood, and taking place in the grounds of Bolton Abbey Priory on Friday, July 1.

It will be performed by Illyria, one of the foremost theatrical interpreters of Dahl’s work and well-known for its magical open-air theatre productions suitable for all the family.

This year is a milestone for the company as it is celebrates its 25th anniversary and the centenary of Roald Dahl’s birth.

For further details of all these events please visit grassington-festival.co.uk