Rain or shine, the St Patrick's Day parade that will snake its way through central Dublin on Saturday will feature myths and legends retold by students, reports Gráinne Faller

They have grown up watching it, year after year, on the streets and on television. Now transition-year students from several Dublin schools are rehearsing furiously for their star turn in the city's St Patrick's Festival parade, on Saturday. "It's amazing," says Aodhán Gregory, a student at Firhouse Community College, in Dublin. "Everyone's really excited. There's nothing like it."

Firhouse Community College is one of the schools taking part in Culture 2000, a cross-cultural project organised by the festival. This year groups in the festival are working with theatre and community groups in Cracow and Lodz, in Poland, Prague, in the Czech Republic, Setubal, in Portugal, and Newcastle Emlyn, in Wales. The idea is for each group to look at cultural identity through myth and legend.

Since January the students in Firhouse and students at Dublin 7 Educate Together National School have been participating in workshops run by the St Patrick's Festival organisers. They were reintroduced to Irish myths and legends before exploring legends from other countries.

"For the pageant we decided to focus on three parts of the Fionn mac Cumhaill legend," says Brian Gregory, a transition-year student. "There's a section on the salmon of knowledge, a section on the fianna and one on Fionn himself." The pageant in Saturday's parade will be based around these three areas of the legend.

Apart from the myth-and-legend theme, the organisers had no idea about the direction they wanted the students to take, so the students' input was essential.

Norma Leen manages the festival's outreach programme. "The students came up with the design of the project," she says. "We have some inflatable creatures as centrepieces of the pageant, and they were based on drawings from the national-school students."

"They kept us in it all the time. We were always consulted about everything," says Brian. "From the costumes to the music, any input we gave was taken on board."

The students have come a long way. "We were really uncoordinated at the start," says Aodhán. "The atmosphere was very relaxed, though, so it wasn't too discouraging." "There was definitely a sense of, oh, God, are we actually going to do this?'" says Brian. "We sort of shied away from it at the start. That didn't last for long, though!"

A group will be coming over from Poland for the parade, and they will be performing with the students. "That will be really interesting," says Oisín McColgan, who is also a transition-year student at Firhouse Community College. "There were actually a lot of the same basic ideas in the Polish legends as there are in the Irish ones."

Culture 2000 is not the only project in the parade with an international element. City Fusion is a community-based project, organised with the help of Dublin City Council, that involves 16 Dublin-based groups with members from as far afield as Indonesia to as local as St Joseph's Secondary School on Stanhope Street, in the city centre. Community groups and transition-year students have been working on their own legend of Dublin. People are learning to dance, to drum and to juggle. There is even a group of Sikhs living in Dublin who have learned to stiltwalk.

Kareen Pennefather, City Fusion's artistic director, says: "The groups have been very keen and enthusiastic. It's a great way for people to feel as if they are a real part of the city."

Jessica Somerville, a transition-year student at Stanhope Street, was on her way to rehearse with a community group in Ballymun when she spoke to Transition Times. "It's the best experience ever," she says. "We've been learning our dances and making our costumes. It's just so different."

Jessica says she wasn't the most enthusiastic member of her group at first. "I didn't really want to do it. I just thought I'd be too nervous, being on the TV and all. Now I can't wait."

At the very least, the pageants will be colourful and eye-catching. The Stanhope Street students will be dressed as swans landing in a strange country - and doing "quite a funky little dance", according to Pennefather.

The Firhouse girls will be dressed as the "graceful deer" hunted by the fianna, according to Mariam Said-Mohamed. "We'll be doing a small dance for the crowd," Mariam explains. "The anticipation is growing now. It's a great opportunity. It really makes me feel more Irish." While the girls will play the deer, the boys are relishing the roles of the hunters. "We'll be dressed in black with armour," says Aodhán. "We'll be walking behind a float with a huge deer head on it."

Considering how awful the weather was for the parade last year - remember the poor Brazilian samba dancers? - the students are remarkably relaxed about the prospect of similarly poor conditions on Saturday. "We'll take the weather as it is," says Oisín. "We'll just hope that it isn't too bad."

"I'm dying for the day to come," says Jessica. "We're all going to have some laughs."

The St Patrick's Festival Parade starts on Saturday at noon, starting at Parnell Square, Dublin 1, and finishing at St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin 8. See www.stpatricksfestival.ie