New Oswestry festival proves to be big hit with the children
A new children's festival has been staged in a public park in one of Shropshire's market towns for the first time in a bid to educate young people about the dangers of drink and drugs.
The first CAP-Fest at Cae Glas Park in Oswestry was organised by the OsCap group, which works to curb underage drinking and substance abuse in the town.
Hundreds of children attended the festival in glorious sunshine and various groups had stalls at the event.
Among the groups running stalls was Oswestry Youth Cafe which had a display of drugs and drug paraphernalia on show.
Oswestry mayor Chris Schofield said: "It is horrendous when you see it on display like this.
"We all know cannabis has been around for a while but you look at some of the other stuff and I wouldn't even know what they are.
"There is GHB here, everything and it is quite frightening.
"This is why we all need to work together to tackle these problems."
Shropshire and town councillor Vince Hunt said he was delighted at the success of the event, which was held on Friday.
He said: "As chairman of OsCap I wanted to do something like this so we can show that you don't have to go down to the park or on the street corner to have a drink and to have fun.
"There is an alternative and all the activities today show that."
Among the activities were music workshops, sport and free ramp sessions by Ramped, a new social enterprise.
The group is a new skatepark project which brings alternative sports such as BMX, skateboarding, rollerblading and scootering to young people across the area.
Young people also got to meet representatives from other youth organisations and get to find out about opportunities are available to them in Oswestry, while a drumming session was also held for youngsters by Jay Moore from Fusion Arts.
The winners of the Oswestry Creative Writing competition were also announced during the event.
Cllr Hunt said: "We had about 150 children take part in the competition.
"We have been overwhelmed at the response and the number of entries and quality of them meant we decided to add some further highly commended prizes to the first and runners up places."
He added: "My thanks go to my fellow judges Constable Mark Moth of West Mercia Police and Heather Rodenhurst of Shropshire Council's library service in Oswestry for helping to assess the entries.
"It is fair to say this has been a very thought-provoking exercise for young people, so a big thank you goes to those who entered."
OsCap is supporting the countywide Shrop-CAP project to help tackle underage drinking in Shropshire.
Steve Charmley, a member of Shropshire Council's cabinet and chairman of Shrop-CAP said: "Events like CAP-Fest are a great way to get young people active and engaged in their local community."
OsCap works to offer alternative activities to young people in the town and encourage them to make healthy choices.
