THE world's most prestigious arts festival is changing, and embracing the turmoil of political debate in a sustained way for the first time.

And the culmination of the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival's concentrated look at our turbulent political and social times will be a new 'Manifesto for the Future' written by 18 leading writers over the Scottish capital's festival season.

The new direction is part of a narrative of constant change at the festival in recent times. Fergus Linehan, since he became director of the EIF in 2014, has wrought some major wrinkles to the cultural institution: most notably, he has introduced contemporary music – indie, electronic and alternative rock – in a sustained and curated way.

There have been, over the last five years, the series of free opening concerts, which this year will see Heart of Midlothian's Tynecastle Park turned into an arena for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by its superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

Linehan has also expanded the urban geographical reach of the festival, with what looks increasingly like a long-term decision to stage contemporary music at the Leith Theatre.

But this year's festival, which takes place from August 2-26, is different in a new way.

Although allergic to overt "themes" in his festival planning, Linehan, and the curator of the new series, You Are Here, the director Kate McGrath, have decided to use this festival in a new way and with new venues: taking on the political hot topics of the contemporary UK and the world with a new strand of politically – mainly with a small P – relevant works.

The 10 You Are Here shows, collectively, looks at issues of domestic violence, urban violence, gender, race, sexuality, class, and colonial legacies.

Although, of course, any large arts festival has works that touch on political themes, this year marks the first time in recent years that the EIF has made a concerted effort to tackle live contemporary political issues with this new festival within a festival.

The strand of work features performances which could possibly be imagined as being on the Fringe: smaller works in a new intimate venue, the Studio at the Royal Lyceum, that holds around 50 people.

In an exclusive interview with the Herald on Sunday, Linehan said: "You’ve always got to push in different directions. You can feel what is out there, in the ether.

"To not be coming to some kind of positive conversation about things at the moment, feels like fiddling while Rome burns."

We spoke in his sparse office at the top of The Hub, the EIF's base at the top of the Royal Mile, two days before the 2019 programme was officially revealed to the world. Linehan added: "It’s also driven by the fact that there are so many artists right now, who are really wanting to address bigger questions. Generationally, there’s also a sense of that.

"It’s not agitprop [art as propaganda], because a lot of it is storytelling – it's not just taking a political position and hammering it home. But it is talking about some of things – whether its talking about the environment, or gender issues, or whatever else – and addressing them quite directly. It's something that is there in the programme as a season, but it is also informing what we do more generally.

"It also gives us the chance to be more flexible, to have more work from Burkina Faso or the Lebanon or Greenland: to be able to spread our wings in terms of the programme."

McGrath said the festival, which was formed in the aftermath of the devastations of the Second World War in 1947, is also thinking about its place in a world in turmoil, and looking ahead to its 75th birthday in 2022.

She said: "I think there is something very interesting and resonant in approaching the birthday, and thinking about the beginnings of the festival, and thinking that arts and culture might have a role to play in redefining or re-articulating what citizenship might be, or what internationalism might be."

McGrath added: "In the 21st century, in the times we are living in, what really does citizenship mean? What are our responsibility to ourselves and others in a very changed world. What does internationalism now mean? Here we are, at the end of March, wondering what that means for the UK. This feels like an incredible opportunity to think about it in a properly international context.

"These are international artists, thinking about migration, climate change, changing ideas about identity, equality...it feels like there's some really big stuff that artists are grappling with."

At the heart of You Are Here is the three week-long conference of 18 writers from around the world (whose identities will be revealed in June) who will, at the end of the festival, reveal a new "manifesto for the world". Their conference will have three parts daily: the Morning Manifesto, where ideas and beliefs will be discussed, Call and Response at 2pm, and in the evening, Breaking Bread, where audiences will be able to have a meal with an artist.

This group, led by David Greig, the playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum, is being inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was made in 1948.

McGrath, who is also director of Fuel theatre company, said: "We were thinking of bringing something new to the festival. It felt appealing to me in that a lot of the work I have been doing is looking at extraordinary artists, that have an unusual perspective or insight into the world, and the ability to share that with an audience in a way that holds within it the possibility of change ... and of engaging in the world we live in.

"These are artists who are really trying to engage in the big questions of our times."

The shows in the new strand include Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True, which will feature 10 of Nigeria's biggest stars of stage and screen on stage to tell "multi-generational stories of inequality and transformation".

La Reprise by Milo Rau, an oft controversial star of theatre, is an "audacious piece of investigative theatre" which looks at the violent, real-life murder in Belgium of Ihsane Jarfi in 2012 .

Red Dust Road is also part of the strand, the National Theatre of Scotland's production of the Makar Jackie Kay's memoir, which has been adapted for the stage by Tanika Gupta.

Other shows include Purposeless Movements, by Birds of Paradise theatre company, written by Robert Softley Gale, a leading disabled Scottish artist and writer of My Left/Right Foot – The Musical.

Hard to be Soft: a Belfast Prayer, by Oona Doherty, the Belfast-based choreographer and dancer, will look "behind the masks of violence and machismo to the inner lives of Belfast hard men and strong women."

Softley Gale said: "Of course EIF must be addressing current, political issues - this is core to art in 2019 staying relevant to our society.

"Disabled people make up 20% of the population and have a right to see themselves, their lives and their experiences reflected in the world around them.

"But perhaps more importantly, the wider population need and want to see stories that haven't been explored yet - the stories of disabled people need to become an integral part of our Scottish culture."

Linehan said that while each show tackles all kinds of issues, the strand does not posit one particular view of the world. He said that he acknowledges that the audiences at the Festival – particularly given their international make-up – may not have a consensus on how they view the world at its issues.

He said: "We don’t have a particular didactic point.

"It's more that there is such complexity in the world – and given that with all the festivals we have the great social gathering of the world, and also a great cultural gathering – I think that is fair to say: 'How is that responding to a world that is in a real state of flux?'

"I mean, we talked a lot about 1947 being about citizenship, and what it means to be a citizen of a place? I think Edinburgh is having a conversation about that as well. So why do you draw that circle, of where you are from and what you have responsibility for: but that can be done with a great sense of fun.

"And that is something that Edinburgh has always had, the capacity to mix its seriousness with a quite Bacchanalian madness as well."

McGrath says that the new strand is a "pilot" for future work of the same kind, a word that Linehan also uses.

That You Are Here is happening at all is due to some combined forces: the British Council, the University of Edinburgh Futures Institute, as well as Place funding, the new £15m funding pot (over five years) provided by the Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh Festivals.

She added: "Edinburgh has this extraordinary history of being at the forefront of conversations about what citizenship is, what a civic society might mean or be, and it is changing now.

"I grew up in Edinburgh, and moved away, and now having an opportunity to relearn and rediscover Edinburgh: it is a fascinating, rich and lots of opportunities for the festival to develop its relationship with the people of the city."

For the festival, the new strand of work allows it to stage smaller works, which are maybe too intricate or pricey for a risky run at the Fringe, but are not the expansive EIF shows which audiences have come to expect in the last 70 years in size, scale and budget.

Linehan said: “One of the things we realised, we did feel there is a certain type of midscale work, that is more geographically diverse than what we have been doing.

“They cannot play on the Fringe, because they are too complex and too expensive. It’s not an opera company, or a huge European theatre company, but we are kind of missing it. So we wanted to put that in. And so that has created this – these are not necessarily huge pieces - but there is a block in the middle there of midscale work that is all quite socially engaged. It also gives it much more of a geographical reach, much more geographical diverse, and it is a little less Eurocentric."

Linehan says that the new programming allows for artists such as Rou or the choreographer Serge Aime Coulibaly t come to the EIF: Coulibaly is presenting Kalakuta Republik, a work inspired by the music and life of Fela Kuti.

He says: "Milo Rou, the most talked about European director at the moment, Serge Coulibaly, again, one of the most talked about directors: these guys you’d never see them at the Fringe.

"They wouldn’t set up a tent for 70% of the box office at the Fringe and give it a go. There was always a thing in Edinburgh actually. Do you define the Fringe versus International festival by dint of scale? That always created something of a gap, with a whole range of artists, who didn’t necessarily want to do big, big work, but whose work was complex and they were still senior artists. It meant that a lot of artists were just not coming through here."

Linehan said that The Departure Lounge series, led by Greig, may also point to new material for the festival in the future. In a sense, the festival itself may be generating new shows through this year's activities.

He said: "All of these things are piloting how we might be able to use the festival beyond the ‘Come in and do your four performances, and we'll get you back out to the airport.’

So, I ask, it is a way of generating its own material in some way?

He says: "Well, generating it's own material but also using a combination of the artists, people here in Edinburgh, and people of a shared interest, to be able to talk about things. But within the framework of some kind of performance or social event. Rather than a much more passive event, like a talk."

This year's new programming will be an experiment, and, it seems, a template for further evolution of the EIF.

McGrath added: "How incredible is Edinburgh that 18 writers from 18 countries can, over the course of a month, have a conversation with people from the city, locals and visitors, about what a manifesto for the future will look like?

"By the end of the month, they will have collectively created some kind of aspirational manifesto for the future: we shall see what happens. But it seems like a brilliant starting point for a lot of interesting conversations."