PUPILS at Darlington's Haughton Community School are in training for a major African arts festival, to be held next month.

Named after a Ghanaian proverb, All Dwelling Places Are Not Alike (Adpana), the event's main aim is to increase pupil awareness about different ways of life along the Greenwich Meridian line.

Running through the UK, France, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo and Ghana, the line has been the subject of an Oxfam and Channel Four-coordinated project, called On the Line.

The Transco-sponsored festival organisers, at Haughton School, and visiting theatre company in residence Cap-a-Pie, are keen to promote an understanding of the things people along "the line" have in common.

It will feature African dance, music, and a selection of classic films by African directors, many virtually unknown in the UK.

Year nine pupils are making short animation films based on themes from "line" countries, and teaching in several disciplines is being dovetailed with the festival's major themes.

"We think the Adpana festival is a unique opportunity for pupils at Haughton to experience a host of new cultures", said Andrew Nagy, of Cap-a-Pie. "We wanted the publicity to be handled in a unique manner."

The festival's theatre centrepiece, The Great Boo Boo, will have been premiered at Burkina Faso's biennial international theatre festival, which Cap-a-Pie flies out to on October 23.

A further hope is to organise an informal Internet twinning arrangement with a lyce (high school) in the Ouagadougou area.

The festival mini-season of films is a further deliberate attempt to get beyond cliched outside representations of African life.

By celebrated African directors, including Burkina's Idrissa Oudraogo, Cannes prize winner Soulymane Ciss and others, the screenings cover stories of change, upheaval and modernisation, but also everyday life and dreams.

Other festival initiatives include exploring African cuisine and possibly an in-school radio station, playing music from along the line and putting out information about festival events. Among end results should be a record of the week and a body of work on the key themes, produced by pupils themselves