Sculptures made from car park tickets and a six-feet high sheep called Dotty are just some of the wacky but wonderful ways of bringing art to the masses during the next ten days.

Billed as the first annual Art Invasion in Cumbria, FRED gets under way today (Friday) until October 10 across the whole of the county, from the Solway Firth to Morecambe Bay, the west coast to the Pennines and all spots in between.

Artist Lara Greene will dress a tree near Kendal Parish Church, by the river, and people parking their wheels at South Lakeland District Council car parks at Kendal, Grasmere, Ambleside, Windermere, Grange-over-Sands, Kirkby Lonsdale and Ulverston will find instructions on the reverse of their ticket on how to make a ticket sculpture courtesy of a diagram by Adele Prince.

A coffee morning held this evening (Friday, 7.30pm) by experimental artisans Fusion plays with visuals and narratives at Kendal Town Hall, and 125 fence posts at Devil's Bridge, Kirkby Lonsdale, will be decorated with shoes by Kendal concept artists Paul Macfarlane and Jenny Wroe. Paul's links through teaching in Tanzania inspired the creative AsArt duo to make a piece of site specific outdoor sculpture as part of the FRED project, from which all the proceeds will go back to support children in Tanzanian schools.

Meanwhile, Jac Scott's six-feet high Dotty, made out of mild steel and merino wool, will be out-and-about at tourist spots across the area.

FRED has been organised by Fold, an artist-led group based in Kirkby Stephen, which aims to promote contemporary arts practice in rural areas, and the Cumbria Network - an artists' network resource.

"We were looking to find ways of getting art into people's everyday life making art a part of people's lives to show that contemporary art isn't scary or difficult, or the reserve of large cities like Liverpool and London," explains Fold's Steve Messam.

"The whole ethos of the FRED festival is to allow artists to take their work out to people rather than expecting people to visit their art in a gallery.

"It's all part of not only raising awareness of the wealth of art in the region, but also helping to make Cumbria a more exciting place to live and work."

FRED events are on buses, at service stations, on the streets, trains, in walls and on the fells.

And Steve claims there is a FRED event within walking distance of everyone in the county at some stage over the ten days.

For the past three months, 64 artists from Cumbria and elsewhere have been pulling out the stops preparing for what Steve claims is the UK's largest and newest festival of site-specific work, demonstrating there is more to the county than lakes and fells to inspire and influence art.

Each of the many individual events has been initiated by the artists themselves and brought together under the artistic eye of FRED coordinator Hilary Thorn.

For the full breakdown of all FRED events log on to www.fredsblog.com or check out the guide available at tourist information centres around the region.