An East Oxford youth theatre group is set to celebrate its 45th anniversary by staging its most ambitious project yet.

Thousands of children have been part of Oxford Youth Theatre, based at Pegasus Theatre in Magdalen Road, since it first began in 1962.

A series of plays called Journey to Freedom will be the last major event at the theatre before a £6.3m revamp of the site begins.

Artistic director Ewton Daley said: "This is the last opportunity we have to do something like this, where we own a venue and can do what we like in it before it is refurbished.

"What we plan to do is celebrate the end of an era, before we start the next one."

Journey to Freedom will take place over a week in March 2008 to coincide with the end of the year commemorating the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade The production will trace Black history from before and during the slave trade, through the civil rights movement, to the building of a contemporary multi-cultural society in Oxford and throughout the UK.

Over the course of three nights, the story cycle will be completed - then the group will start at the beginning again.

Members of the youth theatre will be joining up with Pegasus-based adult theatre group Platypus and other Oxford community groups to perform, design, build and technically operate the show.

Mr Daley said: "The project is ambitious in the sense of not just the numbers of young people involved, but we are also mixing up age groups, mixing young people involved in dance, music, drama, all kinds of different things, to create an epic story."

And Mr Daley is eager to get the young people involved from the very beginning.

He said: "We will come with a shape, a shell or framework, and from there we have to map out the different scenarios and scenes.

"We will work with our members to fill it in and they will devise some of the characters, some of the situations, some of the dances, all supported by a pool of 22 different professional artists."

About 160 people will be involved in the production, ranging from six-year-olds to adults.

The theatre group's members committee meets on a monthly basis and has already begun discussing the project.

Mr Daley said: "There is no point in pursuing it if they were not interested but they are behind it 100 per cent.

"They will be working with a lot of people they have never worked with before and that is one of the things that's really exciting to them. They are also really interested in the topic, not so much the history of slavery but how slavery affects people today, child labour and things like that."

Rehearsals will begin in earnest in September.