Standing in a lake as he scrubbed red wallpaper paste from his nearly naked body, it occurred to Dave Reeves there might be less messy ways of bringing arts to the people.

The 51-year-old had been performing The Second Coming, a solo piece of experimental drama.

He said: "I was originally going to do it naked but opted to perform from inside a clingfilm obelisk. I wanted to create slime for it so I dyed wallpaper paste red and tipped it over myself.

"It was very effective but very hard to get off.

"When I performed it at a festival there was no shower and I had to walk to a nearby lake to scrub it off."

Ten years on, as artistic director of Streets of Brighton, a showcase of free parades, shows and street theatre, Mr Reeves has managed to bring art to 1,000,000 people.

The father-of-five, who lives near Preston Park, Brighton, originally trained as an art and drama teacher but, faced with the prospect of teaching art to comprehensive school pupils with nothing but a handful of bent brushes, soon moved on.

In 1984, along with Angie Goodchild, Neil Butler and Pat Butler, he took over a couple of arches on Brighton seafront and set up the Zap Club as a venue for cutting-edge performance arts in front of live audiences.

He said: "We wanted to create an innovative venue that combined the wild art of cabaret with clubbing."

After one too many brushes with wallpaper paste, he turned solely to producing.

He said: "Some people might say producers are failed artists but I find the whole process of artistically putting things together is equally as exciting as performing."

Street art was a natural extension as his passion was always experimental theatre and performance arts.

He said: "It was about how to get the other 95 per cent of the population involved.

"I don't mean to slate things like opera but it is quite elitist.

"It's not just that it's expensive, it's played to small audiences. I wanted to bring new arts to new audiences and create exciting work accessible to wider audiences."

Streets of Brighton had a relatively modest start - eight companies, 25 performances on four sites over one day.

He said: "It's wonderful to look back on how it has grown. We started with crowds of about 8,000 people. Last year there were 200,000."

It took time for Brighton to embrace this strange form of art, which has included men breastfeeding in Churchill Square and a procession of coffins through the streets.

Mr Reeves said: "There have been times when I haven't been sure if acts would work. You have to take a risk.

"In the first year there was an act called Negrabox which went around eating children. It was quite macabre but it worked really well.

"Another time a family was chased inside a shop. That's one of the things I love about street art.

"If you were to stage something like that inside it would be experimental theatre that would appeal to a certain type of person.

"On the streets you have a wonderful mix of families, children, arty types.

"The beauty of it is that if you don't like it, you can walk away."

As well as entertaining people, Streets of Brighton, which last year changed from a company to a charity, has put Brighton on the map.

It is now one of the major international destinations for street art.

Today and tomorrow 500 delegates descend on the city for The National Street Arts Meeting, a sort of trade fair for the medium, and the opportunity to see and book the different acts.

Streets of Brighton, funded by groups such as Brighton Festival, Brighton and Hove City Council, the Arts Council and the EU, has also been a springboard for talent.

Beatles-on-stilts, the Elvii - a group of Elvis impersonators - and the Invisible Men, who have all been part of Streets of Brighton, now play around the world.

Mr Reeves has no intention of relaxing, however. His sights are set firmly on the future and on developing street art further.

Streets of Brighton is part of The Polycentre for Artistic Creation, a European partnership involving Sotteville-les-Rouen, Amiens, Loos-en-Gohell, Tunbridge Wells and Hastings, which offers cultural exchanges and training.

The programme aims to set up a permanent creation centre in England, based on French models, where groups can develop their work.

Mr Reeves said: "I want to make sure in the next ten years there is a creation centre in the UK and preferably in Brighton. There are several in France and it's the reason they have such fantastic street art.

"We may have reached a ten-year mark but this is only the beginning."