Neil Butler, artistic director of street arts festival Big in Falkirk (and the organisation UZ Events, which annually creates it), travels the world in his search for exciting work to promote in Scotland and across Europe in conjunction with colleagues in the In Situ outdoor performance promotion network. As he contrived to be in Manhattan at the time of the 9/11 attack and in Sri Lanka for the tsunami, he looks like dangerous company. However, that link with Sri Lanka has produced a piece of work for this year's Big in Falkirk that is more peacefully timely.

As visitors arrive at the Callendar Park site this weekend (and there were 100,000 of them over the two days last year), they will be met be an installation by Chandraguptha Thenuwara, a very well-known and respected artist in his Sri Lankan homeland - and a renowned peace activist there. Barrelscape, which is his first solo show in western Europe, echoes the change in the beautiful landscape of Sri Lanka which is a result of the state's continuing conflict with the Tamil Tigers. The army's presence on every road is marked by a checkpoint constructed from camouflage-painted oil drums and barrels. Since the collapse of peace talks in 1995, the barrels have become a common sight in Colombo and its suburbs, and his version of these barricades is a critical comment on the state of siege in his homeland. Doubtless Scots will make the connection the artist intends, but the presence of Grangemouth, clearly visible on a nearer coastline, and the dispute between operator Ineos and its workforce might also cross their mind.

That bridge between local concerns and those of the east is a serendipitous one, because once inside there will be other reminders of the other side of the world. The music stage (which continues its taste for retro-headliners with an incarnation of 10CC featuring original member Graham Gouldman), features, on Saturday, the dance music of Kissmet, an Anglo-Indian combo fronted by two Sikh brothers and performing in Punjabi, Hindi and English music that blends bhangra, rock and funk, that has already been seen at Edinburgh's Hogmanay and Glasgow's West End Festival.

On Saturday and Sunday, Callendar House itself becomes the backdrop for Nutkhut's Bollywood Steps, a spectacular celebration of all that is kitsch in Indian cinema. Choreographed by Simmy Gupta and with ambitions to the Hollywood of Busby Berkeley as well as Mumbai, the show has been specially adapted to the location and promises to be the best use of the house itself yet seen at Big in Falkirk.

"It is very sexy, but in an acceptable family way," says Butler, "and clever pastiche, although you don't really need to get the in-jokes about Bollywood films to enjoy it. It is just a fantastic music and dance show, with a lot of gorgeous male and female beauty."

Those with a knowledge of popular Indian cinema will, however, appreciate details such as the use of playback music, the subversion of narrative cliches and, of course, the obligatory wet sari scene. Pyrotechnics join the water and vast number of fast costume changes to make the show.

Fireworks are always an important part of the Big in Falkirk experience and Butler draws a clear line between two sorts of pyrotechnicians. There are those, he says, who like making bright explosions and there is another smaller group who use pyrotechnics as an artistic medium. France's Groupe F, who brought the Highland Year of Culture to a close in Inverness earlier this year, are probably the best known of those, and the Sussex-based World Famous probably the best company in the UK.

The example of their work that will be known best to people in Glasgow is Sticky, the collaboration with Improbable Theatre that took place in the car park beside the Old Fruitmarket in Ingram Street in 2002. An incredible insect-like creation of adhesive tape and clever lighting which mesmerised everyone who saw it, its creation was oddly contemporaneous with the arrival for the first time on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe of Slovenian musicians Terrafolk. A year later, that band was one of the hot tickets at the Spiegeltent in Edinburgh and its energetic take on world music will provide the soundtrack to the new commission from The World Famous that will be unveiled in Callendar Park on Sunday at 10pm.

Full Circle is a piece of work that is intended to go on to a long life on the In Situ circuit after its debut, and already has engagements in Greenwich in June and Stockton in August, with a sojourn to Turin in Italy at the end of July. Those audiences will have a better idea what to expect, but the narrative seems to be an ecological one that may chime well with the Barrelscape installation at the entrance. The music of the band will bring life and colour to a wintry landscape which is succeeded by a violent storm in a show that has been designed and lit by many of the team that worked with Improbable on Sticky, including lighting designer Phil Supple and co-designer of the show, Graeme Gilmour. Although such commissions always involve an element of risk, Butler is clear in his brief about what the show should achieve.

"It needs to be artistically credible and accessible to a very wide audience - and capable of playing to an audience of up to 30,000 people."

At 40 minutes long, Full Circle will be a meaty (or, more likely, veggie) finale to this year's Big in Falkirk programme, but from 1pm on both days there will be plenty to see, and much of it highly mobile and hard to avoid. Cocoloco's Mafia Wedding and Cacahuete's Mama's Funeral seem oddly complementary narratives and the latter company's Rock Stars sound like near relations of some of the creations of Glasgow's own Mischief La-Bas. As well as the headliners (The Levellers on Saturday and 10CC on Sunday) the music programme includes the eclectic dance sounds of Peatbog Faeries, Dundee's excellent Hazey Janes and Glasgow's latest emergent young songsmith, Esther O'Connor, all playing on Sunday. Visual art includes a second year of the collaboration with Glasgow School of Art on environmental art installations and a one-man performance in the Park Gallery that recreates The Wooster Group show House/Lights. The Manhattan troupe brought that production to the Edinburgh - and in its own intimate way, Big in Falkirk has now become the Edinburgh August experience in microcosm.