Arts among the seagulls and fishing boats: thousands seek out a sedate antidote to the Edinburgh fringe

It is the ultimate fringe venue, an antidote to Edinburgh billed as the nation's gentler festival - with added seagulls. While thousands throng the Scottish capital for the international festival, a fishing village 40 miles away is celebrating the niche it has carved out as an alternative arts event.

Pittenweem Arts Festivalin Fife marks its 21st anniversary this year with more than 70 homes, halls and hastily cleared garages throwing open their doors for exhibitions, shows, drama and music.

Despite refusing to re-schedule to avoid a clash with the better-known festival, the organisers have attracted their biggest audiences to date. Bill Stevenson, aged 50, the Pittenweem festival's chairman, said: "We get people who come for a different type of buzz. It's a gentler version of Edinburgh.''

As in Edinburgh, Pittenweem has drama, poetry and fireworks. Similarly, the venues are marked with large numbers on the doors that can be checked against a map. But there the similarities end.

Many of the venues are front rooms. In the capital, the influx of tourists has pushed house rentals to more than £1,000 a week. Pittenweem - a community of fishermen and artists - is merely hoping to cover its estimated £20,000 costs. In the village, a desirable harbour-front venue has been rented out for the week for the price of helping to clear it out.

Gill Smith, an artist from Edinburgh doing brisk business from a repainted garage next to a wholesale fish merchants, said: "I'm pleased to be out here. It's the first time I've done it. It's different from displaying in galleries and people take much more interest.''

Laura Rogers, 24, and her husband Manuel, 22, had dumped most of their belongings in the bedroom and were selling pictures and ceramics from a sofa in the living room. Mr Rogers said: "People look at our plants and comment on how realistic they look. They don't realise they're not for sale. But we have sold quite a few things.''

Pittenweem, with its population of 3,000 people spread around the picturesque harbour, provides charms that Edinburgh cannot. Ann Terris, 46, part of a group of artists from Livingston, said: "Edinburgh is just too vast, you can't get round to seeing everything. We're just interested in the paintings and the fish suppers.''

Robert Callender, 71, who taught at Edinburgh College of Art for more than 30 years, said that the Pittenweem festival gave a focus to young Scottish artists in a way that Edinburgh no longer did. He said the recent opening of an exhibition of works by the French artist Monet in Edinburgh illustrated this. "If Monet is the best they can come up with I think it's a poor reflection on artists in Scotland," he said. "They could have had a survey of Scottish art showing what's happening now as opposed to what happened 120 years ago.''

But the organisers at Pittenweem believe that Scotland is big enough to cope with the attractions of Edinburgh and the village. It may not match Edinburgh in size, said Mr Stevenson, but the organisers still got 500 cars in the car park for the fireworks.