Celebration of Scottish author of Peter Pan and young people’s story-telling

Dreams for the Future is a celebration of Scottish novelist and playwright J M Barrie (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937) creator of Peter Pan, and also of young people’s story-telling. The Festival, being held in Dumfries (Scottish Gaelic: Dùn Phris) from November 24 to December 2, will mark Scotland’s Year of Young People (Bliadhna na h-Òigridh) and feature events for all ages involving story-telling, music and theatre. Details of the Dreams for the Future Festival can be obtained from the Moat Brae website.

The celebrations are being held ahead of the reopening of a house in Dumfires which helped inspire the Peter Pan story. Moat Brae was built in 1823.  J.M. Barrie moved to Dumfries in 1873 from Kirriemuir, in Angus, where he had grown up as one of ten children in a weaving family. His childhood friends were Stewart and Hal Gordon, son of James Gordon who owned Moat Brae. He later described how the many hours he had spent spent playing fantastic games in the gardens at Moat Brae had given him the ideas incorporated in the Peter Pan story. The death of his brother, David, in a skating accident, was also to influence the story of Peter Pan. This had a profound and devastating effect upon his mother who believed that through his premature death David would always remain a boy. 

Peter Pan is J. M. Barrie's most famous work, which appeared in the form of a 1904 play and a 1911 novel. In 1929, he gave the copyright of the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children's hospital in London. After a long period of campaigning and fund raising by the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust, the house and gardens of Moat Brae was saved from demolition.  Now the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust is creating a National Centre for Children’s Literature and Storytelling with a Neverland Discovery Garden at Moat Brae, which will open next year.