A ONE-DAY festival of international arts and culture at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum should be extended beyond its planned five-year lifespan, an organiser has said.

More than 3,000 people flocked to the third annual Pitt Fest on Saturday to try their hands at crafts like masonry and leather work and sample international cuisine.

Co-ordinator Helen Adams said she would like to see museum directors nail down the event as a regular fixture on the calender.

The project, which aims to “re-engage people with the Pitt Rivers as a museum of pre-industrial hand crafts” started in 2012 and is funded until 2017.

After that, the future of Pitt Fest is uncertain. The festival is one aspect of a five-year project at the Pitt Rivers called VERVE, funded by £1m from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £600,000 from other grants.

Ms Adams, who is part of a team of seven employed on a five-year contract, said she hoped it could carry on.

She said: “This year went really well, we had about 3,200 people which, considering the cold weather, was very good.

“The sun finally came out at 4pm and we closed on a really nice finish with some live Ugandan music from London’s Seby Ntege and Friends.

“We are hoping it will become an annual event: VERVE is all about making people feel a greater ownership of the museum.

“The Pitt Rivers is a local museum for the people of Oxford and we hope Pitt Fest has made people want to look around it more.”

She said one of the successes of this year’s festival had been a ‘global food corner’ with dishes from Brazil, Peru, Tibet and Italy, and workshops on how to make some of it.

Organisers have already started planning next year’s event, saying they would like to invite Cowley Road chefs and local foraging groups.

Other highlights included classes in Capoeira – a Brazilian martial art form combining dance, acrobatics and music – and lessons on how to play the spoons.

While many of the activities were aimed at children, such as a children’s folk club and a class on making a harmonica out of lollipop sticks, Ms Adams said next year she would also like to have more activities for adults.

She said: “When you’re an adult there are fewer opportunities to have a go at new things, so that was part of what we wanted to do.

“We are trying to provide opportunities to get hands-on with crafts or watch demonstrations of people using their hands to create things.”

The theme for next year’s festival will be resourcefulness.

Ms Adams said possible activities could include making jewellery out of recycled materials.

The 2017 Pitt Fest is set to be centred on the theme of archaeology.