Months of hard work by 45 teachers and 1,200 performers comes to a spectacular conclusion when 13 primary and 3 secondary schools, a special school, two colleges and two local drama groups perform versions of the Bard's work. Festival director Tim Noble explains the educational benefits being seen in West Swindon and further afield.

Why do a Shakespeare festival?, a parent asked me last year.

One reason is that the National Curriculum in English and the Literacy Hour in primary schools requires pupils of 10, 13 and 15 to have studied Shakespeare's work. For GCSE in English Literature, they must write an essay about some of his plays.

But there are other good reasons too. In the 37 plays Shakespeare wrote, there are timeless stories that for five hundred years have interested, amused, terrified, educated and challenged the millions of people who have either read his plays or seen them acted.

Here can be found family jealousy, young love, murder, anger, pride, humility, generosity and deceit - all human life, dramatised to show his characters in the grip of these emotions, heightened by great poetry.

His range is unparalleled in world writing. Some like Falstaff, the jolly boozy braggart who corrupts the young Prince Henry, or Romeo and Juliet, the world's most memorable lovers, are so much themselves that they almost have a life outside the plays.

They are 'known' by countless people across the globe and everyone who has struggled with the question of the meaning of life shares something with Hamlet.

Why Shakespeare? Well, he is somehow 'necessary' for us all - otherwise he simply wouldn't be read or watched outside schools. Somewhere on the planet, at any given moment, there is a Shakespeare play going on. It might be in a tiny upstairs room of a bombed-out house in some war-torn province, or a huge and expensive production in a national capital's finest theatre, but he is constantly being performed.

People clearly need and like his plays - no other writer has been translated into so many other languages, despite them being written in 16th century English. His collected plays, together with the Bible, have been the biggest seller in world literature for hundreds of years. Not bad for a provincial English writer born over 500 years ago, who never bothered to keep or collect his own writing together.

But why perform Shakespeare? Surely it's too hard for children to understand? Well, I take my cue from one of this country's finest actors, Sir Ian McKellan, who wrote to us in 1997 in support of our festival for The Tempest and said he believed that long before Shakespeare is studied, he should be performed.

Nationally famous Sarah Gordon and Chris Geelan of the Young Shakespeare Company have helped teachers in the West Swindon project by writing guides to some of the lesser known plays and showing them how to introduce each work using a story-telling method.

Acting out these plays in different ways is fun - 1,200 children can't all be wrong! As they get ready to show their parents and all of Swindon their versions of his plays starting on April 3rd, they will be adding their little bit to the world-wide record of Shakespeare performances being collected by The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Our festival has attracted support from the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford, Education Extra in London, Swindon Arts Foundation and Swindon Council.

American school and college students and teachers are keen to find out more about the festival - and some are even coming to Swindon to watch us perform.

Everybody involved has worked enormously hard and the performances will be memorable for the children who have tackled the Bard with such great enthusiasm.

So if you want to see comedy and tragedy, farce and melodrama, 'It's a Knockout' knockabout and multi-media manoeuvres, ring 874224 and book lots of tickets now.

Festival Launch Saturday 1 April, 10am to 4pm at Greendown School, Grange Park. Meet William Shakespeare, plus actors Susan Tulley, David Suchet and Shakespeare directors

Performances at Greendown School

Monday 3 April to Saturday 15 April, 1.30pm & 7pm daily Tickets £4 adults, £2 children from each school or Greendown, tel: (01793) 874224

Monday 3 April Two Noble Kinsmen (Hreod Parkway) Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors (Shaw Ridge)

Tuesday 4 April Much Ado About Nothing; As You Like It; All's Well That Ends Well (Wroughton)

Wednesday 5 April Merchant of Venice (Saltway) Pericles (Robert Le Kyng) Macbeth (Tregoze)

Thursday 6 April Much Ado About Nothing; The Dream (Brook Field) Julius Caesar (Crowdy's Hill School- matinee only)

Friday 7 April Love's Labours Lost (Abbey Meads) Coriolanus, Troilus & Cressida (Greendown)

Saturday 8 April Henry V (Oliver Tomkins Infants) Richard II (Junction 16 drama group) Henry IV (Cirencester College)

Monday 10 April Henry VI (Greendown) Richard III (Noremarsh) Henry VIII (Oliver Tomkins)

Tuesday 11 April Romeo & Juliet; Taming of the Shrew; Anthony & Cleopatra (Greendown)

Wednesday 12 April The Merry Wives of Windsor (Oliver Tomkins) Twelfth Night (Toothill)

Thursday 13 April King John, Hamlet (Westlea) Measure for Measure (Ridgeway)

Friday 14 April The Tempest (Oliver Tomkins Infants) Cymbeline (Haydonleigh)

Saturday 15 April Titus Andronicus (Greendown) Othello (Head to Toe drama group) King Lear (Swindon College)