A runaway girl, a lost dog and a magical tramp meet in a city full of fear and decide to form a fear brigade. They build a fear engine, as you do, to hose down the urban scariness and, at first, sort out what they can deal with — nightmares, dogs, bullying at the local school: kids’ stuff. But, then, things get sticky and they run up against the arms trade and realise they are handling more bombs than they can detonate. So far, so wholeheartedly liberating in a children’s world packed with plastic pink fairy wings and CGI face-lifted Noddies.

As a summer of Bob the Builder movies (straight to video with Built to be Wild — it’s not even a proper pun!), underachieving theme parks and overpriced capital “kids’ attractions” looms, thank the children’s poet and playwright Adrian Mitchell that someone (er, him) is creating a fun, worthwhile event for children with not a trademark yellow hard hat or a £5 Coke in sight.

Mitchell is premiering his new play The Fear Brigade as the theatrical centrepiece of Global Village 06, a festival conceived by the International Falcon Movement, a campaigning body that includes the Woodcraft Folk (our national gang of peacenik, mufti-wearing Scouts who grew out of the 1920s rebellion against Baden-Powell). The Woodies have amassed a UK membership of 18,000, despite having their funding axed by Gordon Brown last year, allegedly for opposing the Iraq War.

Andrew Dickson, a regular on Mike Leigh’s films, is directing and composing the music to the play, the hot young designer Miriam Nabarro is conceiving an engine that should make Chitty look like a secondhand Skoda, and the cast comprises Woodcraft folk. A story book will be published in English, Spanish and German to coincide with the festival. This Glasto for Overseas Development Ministers-in-the-making is being staged at Kent County Showground, near Maidstone, on July 29-August 9 and is expected to attract 5,000 people from 60 countries.

Its central aims, via a series of cultural happenings and workshops, are to champion sustainability and a world without want and fear. It’s the stuff of rhetoric, you say. Sure. But its ambition is inspirational and previous events have been highly effective on a local level. With projects such as The Fear Brigade the big questions are made manageable for under-11s. It is these children who are inspired to take local action; from campaigning for recycling in their schools to forming anti-bullying groups.

If you’re not a Woodie or in an affiliated group, it’s unlikely that you will get in to the festival. But there is hope that The Fear Brigade will get a London run later in the year, and everyone can get involved via the website www.globalvillage2006.org, where there will be hundreds of educational activities. Children can even quiz the Minister for International Development about world poverty. And that’s where Bob the Builder might actually prove inspirational. His irritating motto, Can we fix it?, will, of course, be a question worth asking.

• www.woodcraft.org.uk