WHAT is the region’s biggest outdoor arts festival starts on Thursday night with a spectacular but emotional show about the First World War.

The 29th Stockton International Riverside Festival starts for the first time at Preston Park in Eaglescliffe with an anti-war performance called Furious Folly.

It takes place as night falls in a no-man’s land on the battle front between two lines at the Somme which was taking place exactly 100 years ago.

Disorientated, the audience will find themselves immersed within an open-air collage of sound, light, pyrotechnics and performance.

It will be the first time in the festival’s 29-year history that a SIRF performance will take place in Preston Park. The show begins there at 9.45pm on Thursday night where Mark Anderson will lead a team of international artists to draw on the anti-war spirit of the early 20th Century Dadaist movement.

Find out more at sirf.co.uk