MINI Plant Oxford Sponsors Oxford Youth Festival

A new festival for young people, Mesh – Oxford International Youth Arts Festival, will be taking place this summer thanks to sponsorship from MINI Plant Oxford.

The festival organised by Pegasus, its youth theatre members and partner The North Wall Arts Centre, will happen in the last two weeks of July and features around 100 young people from Oxford with almost another 100 from Europe and beyond. Visiting groups come from twinned cities Leiden (Holland), Grenoble (France) and Perm (Russia) as well as from Bonn (Germany), Sisak (Croatia) and Gaza (Palestine).

The programme will feature performances at Pegasus and the North Wall from each of the groups plus street theatre, a costume parade and a finale – Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit - at the Oxford Town Hall involving all the young participants. They will also take part in a platform debate.

MINI Plant Oxford is supporting the festival in a variety of ways. A Grand Debate on Human Rights and Young People is to be held at MINI Plant Oxford’s ‘T’ building with a panel of invited guests and young speakers. Associates of Plant Oxford are also contributing by using their engineering know-how to build theatre sets and young family members will have an opportunity to take part in the many workshops taking place including drama, design and making, writing and filming.

Dr Jürgen Hedrich, managing director of MINI Plant Oxford, said: “Involvement in the local community is a high priority for us, and we are pleased to be involved with this innovative, new festival.  Plant Oxford employs over 80 nationalities, so we are delighted to be able to support the MESH project because it focuses on developing and encouraging cultural understanding.”