BOOKER prize winner James Kelman, leading playwright David Greig, musicians Emma Pollock, Rikki Ross and Lau are all part of this year’s eclectic Solas midsummer festival.

Described as Scotland’s most family-friendly festival, Solas takes place at a spiritual retreat in Perthshire and not only boasts a packed music bill but also debates and discussions on everything from Brexit to the refugee crisis.

This year’s festival is also hosting two major new international collaborative projects, pairing Scottish musicians with artists in Palestine and Ghana, and there's a new focus on performance. The dance and theatre programme is headlined by dancer Claire Cunningham, whose critically acclaimed solo work investigates issues around disability and cultural difference.

This strand also includes the international premiere of a new work by the Noyam African Dance Institute of Ghana, directed by the lead choreographer of the National Theatre of Ghana, Nii Tete Yartey, created in collaboration with refugee artists in Glasgow and overseen by recently appointed Unesco chair Professor Alison Phipps.

WHAT ELSE IS ON?

THE music programme is even bigger than before and packed with homegrown and international talent including big-name acts such as Radio 1 and 6Music darlings White, Mercury Prize nominee C Duncan, and Lau, acclaimed as one of the best live acts in the UK.

The Ha Orchestra, the UK’s only pan-African symphonic orchestra, will create soundscapes to dance to, while Scottish bands-of-the-moment The Van T’s and Pronto Mama round out a diverse and ambitious music programme that takes in folk, pop, rock, world music and hip hop.

The line-up includes The Spook School, The Little Kicks, Bdy_Prts, Olympic Swimmers, Brass Aye, Mary Ann Kennedy and Finlay Wells, Declan Welsh, Louie Bhoy, Rab Noakes, Emily Smith & Jamie McClennan, Rory Butler, Ewan Macintyre, LaKyoto, Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies, The Daddy Naggins, Josephine Sillars, Reverieme, Black Doves, St Martiins, Home$lice, Big Hogg, The Micro Band and Dancing on Tables.

IS THERE MORE?

SOLAS is also presenting the innovative results of an international musical collaboration. Last year, the festival sent Scottish hip hop artists Declan Welsh and Louie Bhoy (Hector Bizerk) to Palestine to perform at Solas’s sister festival Bet Lahem Live. They toured the West Bank, and collaborated on a series of performances with a host of Palestinian artists. Both musicians will talk about their experiences and perform the work created. The film of their trip, by Bafta-winning filmmaker Iain Hendo, will also be screened at the festival. The Solas Festival team hope to be able to bring the Palestinian artists to Scotland during the festival for the world premiere of the work. Debate, discussion and the sharing of ideas are important parts of the Solas Festival ethos, and the 2017 programme of talks, taking place against a particularly fraught global landscape, seems more urgent and necessary than ever.

Professor Phipps will curate a strand of talks and performance events engaging with the current refugee crisis, while land activist and Green MSP Andy Wightman will host a series of discussions on democracy, ecology, the local and the global. David Greig, artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, will explore whether true democracy is possible in a world without art.

WHO ELSE WILL BE THERE?

THE Sunday Herald Big Debate, a panel discussion taking on the issues of the day, will be a key part of Solas for the first time. Contributing voices from The Sunday Herald and Scottish public life include Lesley Riddoch and editor Neil Mackay. Other speakers at Solas include Duncan Morrow, Louis Abbott (Admiral Fallow), Eilidh Whiteford MP, Sally Foster-Fulton, Ross Greer MSP, Padraig O Tuama, and Ariel Killick.

Booker Prize-winning novelist James Kelman will read from his new novel Dirt Road, backed up by rootsy family band The Dirt Roadsters. O Is For Hoolet investigates Scots and English language and there will be globally inspired storytelling from Mara Menzies, Shetlandic poetry from Christine De Luca and Christie Williamson, and slam from Sam Small. Helen Sedgwick, novelist and physicist, will discuss her hugely acclaimed, metaphysical puzzle box debut The Comet Seekers, described as “an exquisitely layered, thrilling novel” by The New York Times. Tawona Sithole will lead a late-night poetry event with Seeds of Thought and there will be silent fun from the Creative Martyrs and flips and turns from Adventure Circus.

ANY OTHER HIGHLIGHTS?

FOR children there will be puppet shows from Little Fawn Caravan Theatre, toe-tapping songs and stories from Fischy Music and Mrs Mash the Storytelling Cook, magical acrobatics in the tree tops with Whispering Woods, children’s yoga with Tatty Bumpkin, riotous street theatre from SURGE, an all-ages ceilidh with the Homecoming String Band, and workshops in everything from dance to Gaelic poetry. There will also be a packed film programme curated by Africa in Motion, opportunities for Gaelic foraging, Shetlandic translation, workshops, a gospel choir, den making, crafts, dance classes, yoga, an open fire and a hang-out space for young people.

Solas Festival is at The Bield at Blackruthven near Perth, from June 23 to 25. More information at www.solasfestival.co.uk