Edinburgh’s Festivals will play a major role in celebrating London 2012, with the world’s elite and emerging cultural talent gathering in Edinburgh while their sporting equivalents are in London.

As acknowledged by Ruth Mackenzie, Director of Culture, at LOCOG, Edinburgh’s Festivals are a major partner of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.  The start of 2012 will be marked through a partnership with this year’s Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations, which will feature a new major event as part of the countdown to the London 2012 Festival.

Our world leading festival for children and young people The Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival will create two major new pieces of work and Edinburgh’s summer festivals will present an ambitious range of work inspired by the internationalism and aspiration of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

A Cultural Olympiad highlight will certainly be NVA’s Speed of Light an Edinburgh International Festival production presented as part of a wider Festival 2012/Cultural Olympiad Programme and involving many of Edinburgh’s other festivals.

This large scale ground-breaking public art presentation will involve thousands runners on Edinburgh’s iconic Arthur’s Seat every night, animating the hillside with trails of patterned light. Edinburgh’s Festivals’ programmes will celebrate culture on an unrivalled scale and in uniquely significant ways in 2012, building an invaluable legacy for the future.

Each year, Edinburgh’s Festivals attract more than 4m attendees, across 40,000 performances in over 300 venues, involving more than 25,000 artists.  Put simply, Edinburgh’s Festivals are a truly world-renowned, internationally-famous, cultural phenomenon.

The founding principles of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 - to enliven and enrich the cultural life of Europe, Britain and Scotland and to ‘provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit’ after the devastation of World War II - are just as relevant today.

During the summer period seven Festivals coincide, creating what is widely regarded as the greatest show on earth. The city population doubles as people flock to enjoy the work of the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival, the Edinburgh Art Festival, the Edinburgh Mela and of course The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Festival season is not limited to the summer however, with a number of other Festivals throughout the year: Edinburgh's Hogmanay (Dec/Jan), Edinburgh International Science Festival (Apr), Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival (May), Edinburgh International Film Festival (June) and Scottish International Storytelling Festival (Oct).