The pick of spring events from Oxfordshire's 1000th birthday celebrations

Monday 20 November, 2006

There's every reason to visit Oxfordshire in 2007. The county is celebrating its 1000th birthday with an exciting array of special events, festivals and cultural highlights.

Oxfordshire 2007 is a year-long celebration of Oxford's status as a European Centre of Culture and the county's reputation as one of the UK's most popular visitor destinations. Indeed, Oxford was voted the top city in the UK for architecture and culture in the 2006 Condé Nast Reader Travel Awards.

The year kicks off in February with Dancin' Oxford, a new dance festival which aims to get everybody's feet tapping. In March a fire spectacular, Luminox, aims to set Oxford's historic centre alight: a magical three days will also include music, street theatre, lantern processions and a giant pendulum.

March also sees a feast of festivals with Oxdox, the UK's largest documentary film festival, featuring 100 films—many of them world premieres—and a simultaneous live screening of a specially commissioned film from China in 1000 cinemas across the world. Oxfordshire past and present will also be featured through archive film. For reading buffs, the celebrated Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival takes place at Christ Church College, featuring authors Edna O'Brien, Sandi Toksvig, Alexander McCall Smith and many others.

The cream of the country's gospel choirs will be assembling in Christ Church Cathedral in March, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. A further series of unusual and innovative music concerts, from an open air mass choral event, to a sound installation in Dorchester Abbey, are planned for May.

Theatre highlights include special productions by two companies based outside the city. Chipping Norton Theatre—which is rapidly establishing a reputation for exciting and innovative drama, as well as its famously popular annual panto—is staging La Dispute, by Marivaux, the culmination of a two-year collaboration with a theatre company in Normandy. Oxfordshire Touring Theatre Company, which successfully takes professional theatre to non-theatre venues, is celebrating Oxfordshire with a specially commissioned new play, The Falling Sky, which dramatises the lives and concerns of rural people.

Later in the spring season, sport takes to the pavements of Oxfordshire in May with Street Olympix, culminating in a day of races, fun events and a mile street race to commemorate the four-minute mile run by Sir Roger Bannister in Oxford just over fifty years ago.

Oxfordshire wouldn't be Oxfordshire without the Thames: Go with the Flow celebrates the river and its tributaries on the first May Bank Holiday Monday, with events and trails all along the county's waterways.

Other highlights to look forward to in Oxfordshire's millennium year are the UK's first-ever Children's Food Festival, with celebrity chefs Raymond Blanc and Sophie Grigson as patrons; a special Alice's Day (based on Lewis Carroll's famous character); and Faces of Oxfordshire. There will also be walks, trails, exhibitions, open doors, street theatre and much more.

Oxfordshire 2007 is a year of festivals, special events and anniversaries to celebrate a thousand years of the county. Oxfordshire 2007 showcases the remarkable array of talent that exists in every corner of the county and represents a collaboration between hundreds of cultural organisations, individuals and communities to create a special and memorable year. Oxford Inspires, the county's cultural development agency, is providing coordination and practical help to put on the celebration.

Oxfordshire 2007 Diary Highlights

12 February–11 March

Dancin' Oxford: produced by Oxford City Council, Oxford Playhouse, Pegasus Theatre, Headington Theatre and the Oxford Dance Forum

6 March–14 April

The Falling Sky: produced by Oxfordshire Touring Theatre Company

10–25 March

Oxdox, Oxford Documentary Film Festival

13–17 March

La Dispute: produced by Chipping Norton Theatre

15–17 March

Luminox: produced by Simon Chatterton and Ted Dewan

17–25 March

Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Sunday 25 March

Commemoration Service, abolition of the transatlantic slave trade

Monday 7 May

Go with the Flow

Saturday 12 May

Street Olympix

Sunday 13 May

Festival Concert

Saturday 7 July

Alice's Day

14–15 July

The Children's Food Festival


For information on these and other events, visit www.Oxfordshire2007.com.

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