Oxford Inspires' Cultural Platform

Oxford Inspires has initiated a twice-yearly Cultural Platform, the main purposes of which are to attract a well-known speaker to Oxford to discuss a major cultural issue and to help situate the work of Oxford Inspires in a national and regional context.

The first Cultural Platform was held on 20 May 2005. The main presentation was by Liz Forgan, Chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund. Her presentation and the introductory talk by the Chief Executive of Oxford Inspires, Robert Hutchison, are below.

Go to Robert Hutchison's speech

Go to Liz Forgan's speech

Introduction

Robert Hutchison, Chief Executive of Oxford Inspires

This is a cultural occasion so I begin with a poem:

'The trees are coming into leaf,

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again,

And we grow old? No, they die too,

Their yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.'

The poem is called 'The Trees' and in any discussion of heritage one starting point is to remind ourselves about the extraordinary power of renewal in the natural world. The natural heritage, the natural world is not only a source of beauty and wonder, but is also our life support system.

A second reason for reading that poem is that it was written by Philip Larkin, who went to St John's College. St John's College is celebrating its 450th anniversary this year; and reading the poem is a tiny salute to those 450 years of achievement.

The poem is also an example of how heritage is constantly being created. It could have been written this year or last, but in fact was written 38 years ago and is part of Oxford's unique literary heritage.

That's about a third of what I have to say. Sir Roger Bannister is one of the Patrons of Oxford Inspires; it is an honour to have him with us today. He is an unusual kind of inspiration to me in that—when asked to speak on occasions like this one—I reflect that if a man can run a mile in four minutes it ought also to be possible to say something meaningful in that time. So here is my attempt at a four-minute guide to Oxford Inspires.

Oxford Inspires was born into a City with a very busy and diverse cultural life. What are we able to add to this busyness and diversity? Our approach is collaborative. We see our work as a necessary and considerable extension of previous collaborations between Oxford's two universities, the Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council.

We are a cultural development agency which sees culture as the whole way of life of a community. Our interests cover urban design, environmental issues, scientific creativity and public engagement with science, as well as with promoting the arts, sport, local food and enjoyment of the heritage.

Turning first to the environment, there are demonstrable public benefits to be derived from the Universities and local authorities working more closely together on transport, energy, purchasing and waste reduction—unglamorous stuff, slow progress, but of great importance. On the cultural side there is the Evolving City programme. Please pick up one of these brochures after this meeting. You will find that the Evolving City programme is about the City as a whole. You can read about projects in Barton, Blackbird Leys and Rose Hill, as well as about exhibitions at the Ashmolean and at Modern Art Oxford and about cultural activities that link Oxford with Europe. The programme is designed to point to and strengthen the interdependence of the many communities and cultures of Oxford, and to encourage more informed debate about how Oxford should develop and change.

Oxford needs smarter, livelier and better-designed public spaces. We are pleased to be playing a small part in the City Council's plans for developing Bonn Square; we strongly support the work that the Oxford Preservation Trust is coordinating in relation to Broad Street and look forward to the opening of the whole Castleyard complex. Bonn Square, Broad Street, the Prison and Castleyard development, indeed the redevelopment of the whole area between the station and Carfax, is a magnificent opportunity to strengthen the public realm in Oxford and to take another step towards Oxford becoming a great European City of Culture.

But we're not just concerned with Oxford. Far from it. The City and County are also interdependent. The outline plans for 2007 are contained in the consultative document which we published in February. 2007 will celebrate one thousand years of Oxfordshire and encourage everyone to enjoy more of what is on their doorstep. It will be a year of enhanced festivals and special events; the special events will be special by virtue of character, quality and scale. They are currently in the early stages of planning. The aim is that all special events will be both enjoyable and enlightening. The River Thames, science and technology in the County, the arts in their infinite variety, local food, the Oxfordshire countryside, and above all the people of Oxfordshire will all loom large in the programme. Social inclusion will be a major consideration. Oxford Inspires will act as catalyst, coordinator and capacity builder; we will take responsibility for marketing and we will have to do a lot of fundraising. We will certainly be seeking the advice and support of the Heritage Lottery Fund.

In developing the 2007 programme, it is important that we work closely with all six principal local authorities in Oxfordshire and with several departments in each of Oxford's two universities, as well as with a wide range of cultural and community organisations throughout the County, many of them represented at this meeting. We are also keen to deepen our engagement with the private sector. But we are determined to try to do a few things well rather than seek to be all things to all people.

I think my colleagues will agree that the working atmosphere at Oxford Inspires is highly stimulating—at times it seems to me in danger of being terminally stimulating; but it is possible to have a broad vision and also to be highly focussed. All our work is about encouraging effective cultural action to create a better future for the citizens of Oxfordshire. And there won't be a better future without a fuller understanding and appreciation of our history, our natural heritage, and our interdependence.

Beyond Brideshead

Liz Forgan, Chair of Heritage Lottery Fund

It is a pleasure to be here in Oxford today. Not only because it is such a great city and Oxfordshire such a beautiful county but because, for me as the Chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund, Oxford encapsulates a challenge that we at HLF face all the time.

The word 'heritage' is not universally loved. For too many, it has in the past conjured up images of a history that they find inaccessible and irrelevant. Of enormous country houses, and the privileged lineage that goes with them. They may, perhaps, once or twice a year visit these country piles, peer at the portraiture, marvel at the architecture, enjoy the gardens. But they go home at the end of the day having had little more than a nice day out, not having connected with the story of a place and people with which they don't identify.

Yet when we talk to people about their heritage, it's a very different matter. Everyone understands what makes up their heritage, has a story to tell about it, and knows why it is important to them. They value it and cherish it. And it is always and undeniably richer, broader and more complex than others might imagine.

Such is the story of Oxford, a city that could have written the book on heritage. On the face of it, a city of spires and quads. Port Meadow and the river. Bells and gowns. Forever revisiting Brideshead.

Romantic, and indeed profitable, though this is, I do not need to tell you that it is not even half the story. And in isolation it creates and fuels a view of Oxford that many find off-putting and exclusive. Not least many of the people that live here.

Yet if you scratch below the surface of this great city, delve beyond the tourist trail there is—and always has been—a more intricate, more nuanced Oxford which adds far more meaning to the city, to both universities and to its people.

It is an international city. In the 15th Century, it was part of a scholarly Europe that took in Salamanca, Perugia, Padua. A centre of international thought and debate, of multiculturalism, a truly European city long before the concept. A city that has educated prime ministers and presidents, of states the world over. That produced Oxfam, carrying its name with humanity around the world.

A political city. Both Roundhead redoubt and Charles the First's Royalist Capital during the Civil War, whose fall brought it to an end.

A city of innovation—from Nuffield to Nobel prizes.

Of culture—great museums, theatre and art, music from John Tavener and Orlando Gibbons to Rubbra and Radiohead, and a literary tradition from Philip Sidney to Philip Pullman.

A city of sport, Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile.

And a city that in two universities and a raft of other educational institutions has been and continues to be the moulder of young minds, the cradle of ideas.

Oxford is one of the UK's true global brands. Known and revered the world over for its academia, its history and heritage.

But to view it only as an inspiring backdrop or even an alternative to modernity is to miss the point. It is also crucially a huge, proper, living city, teeming with identity old and new, a resource for modern life. A city of people building an exciting future on an impressive past.

This story of 'not just stuff but people too' is our story as it is Oxford's. When I started at HLF, ‘heritage' really did have a bad name. It meant almost exclusively the stuff—treasured by a certain section of society and its culture—the country houses and churches, the libraries of antique books and the museums of masterpieces. Wonderful, yes. Important yes. To be treasured for ever, yes. But not the whole story.

For many—not least those whose cultural roots are in the industrial revolution or whose families hadn't been in the UK when these churches were built or masterpieces painted—they could see little of their own heritage embodied in them.

There were two consequences: Britain's heritage story was being unnecessarily impoverished and second, the Heritage Lottery Fund simply wasn't attracting applications from the range of people that fund us, that most-democratic of institutions, the lottery-playing public. This wasn't good enough.

Some suggested to me that we should change our name, dropping the 'heritage' altogether. Tempting though this rebrand was, it simply wasn't a goer. Apart from anything else, no-one could agree on a better word.

So if we couldn't ditch the word, we decided that we must change people's understanding of it. We must open it up, give it meaning for everyone and make it matter. And it could not just be a PR exercise. It had to go to the very heart of what we do.

So we built it into our strategic aims—to the aim of conserving the UK's heritage, we now added two more aims: to encourage more people to become involved in and make decisions about their heritage; and to ensure everyone can learn about and have access to their heritage.

In adopting those new aims, broadening the horizons of heritage became our philosophical thrust. It is a philosophy that we apply not just to what we do as an organisation, but also to the organisations that apply to us for funding.

And it has been bringing about a revolution. And nowhere illustrates this revolution more completely than Oxfordshire.

Oxford University is no stranger to the debate about access. Whilst normally restricted to the academic, it has applied as much to the heritage riches in is care, the treasure trove of artefacts, architecture, art and archive. The buildings may have been accessible—visually at least—but their contents less so.

The Ashmolean is a good example. Historically this wonderful museum has been the preserve of the privileged and, whilst in theory anyone could pop in and ask to see the Raphael drawings, as I used to when I was an undergraduate, there was very little effort to make it really possible. To bring into this venerable institution those that lived around it but weren't of it.

HLF money is about to rebuild that building. Not just making it physically fit for this century, but taking its heart and turning it inside out, bringing people in, stopping it hugging its treasures to itself. So that now kids from across the county who come to visit won't have to crowd out of the rain under the portico to have their sandwiches—ask a teacher just how much of a difference that kind of thing makes. It is a change that was happening over time but that would have taken a lot longer without the push that we gave it.

Or the Bodleian, with whom we are just starting to work. Another symbol of Oxford but again one that is restricted to too few. Of course it is physically restricted by its ancient, lovely but now wholly inadequate buildings. But also intellectually and psychologically. Similarly the Museum of the History of Science—the oldest surviving purpose-built museum building in the world and full of treasures. But who knew? I spent three years of my life in this town and I never knew it was there. Now, with an HLF grant, opened up with education spaces, family events and workshops, and real access—including one of the most ingeniously designed disabled lifts I've ever seen in a listed building.

I make no apology for the demands we make. If the university is coming to us for large sums of lottery players' money to conserve the fabric and contents or these buildings, then the readjustment that we ask in terms of real thought being given to public, as well as scholarly, access is entirely reasonable. It is for this sector admittedly a huge change and one that can only work in partnership. It is enormously encouraging to see Oxford Inspires so expertly leading on widening the cultural net in the county and city. Taking the broadest view of the cultural life of the county, and opening it up to everyone. And proving that it is all the richer for it.

Not only do we insist that the built heritage—like the Ashmolean, Bodleian and History of Science Museum—is opened up, physically and psychologically, to new audiences. We have also opened up the concept, the very definition of 'heritage' to everyone.

We are sometimes asked by applicants what we define as heritage. We tell them that we don't define heritage, we wouldn't dream of it. We do not take the view that experts should dictate what has value from the past for every person and community across the UK. We could give you a list of the rightly-designated stars—the British Museums, Stonehenges and Hadrian's Walls. And don't get me wrong—we are not off on some politically correct crusade or a dumbing down exercise. These are our passion and our responsibility—indeed we are now their only real hope of substantial funding for renewal and acquisitions. But we don't just do either the big stuff or, for that matter, just the built stuff. Heritage is not so simple.

A majority of our grants go to small projects, brought to us by communities who have identified what has meaning for them from the past, whether it is a local story, a dialect, a folk song or photographic record. We couldn't even know these exist, let alone be able to guess at their significance to the people that understand and own that bit of heritage.

We acknowledge and fund the broadest spread of heritage. Not just museums and their contents; but the buildings that make up the much-loved but sometimes run-down hearts of our towns, giving back to the public the buildings at the centre of their communities

—like Oxford Prison and Castle, right now being given a new lease of life and being opened up to the public for the first time thanks to an HLF grant; the mills, pits and canals of our industrial heritage; the trains, ships and planes of our transport heritage; our wonderful and ever-popular historic parks; the mountains, moors, and marshes of our natural heritage, and the precious species that inhabit them.

The tiny local heritage to the iconic national.

And the people we now work with, who come to us for money, who identify and care for their heritage, who give it continuing use and viability come from right across the spectrum.

The young—our Young Roots programme for 13–20 year olds is our most surprising success—to the old; from every single local authority area in the country;from many different communities—Bangladeshi women's groups, Hebridean islanders, stained glass enthusiasts, Nigerian cultural centres, Traveller communities; from a wealth of organisations—the WI, the cubs, the Round Table.

Demos recently concluded that:

'HLF has shifted the idea of the value and importance of heritage away from something that it exclusively determined by experts on behalf of society, to one that recognises the importance of widespread participation in identifying and caring for what is valued collectively. The work of HLF has broadened the social base for the enjoyment of heritage so that there is now an acknowledged diversity of contributions to the national story.'

And crucially, I would add, to the national, and indeed local and regional, identity. Because that is why the work that we do, in Oxford and Oxfordshire, as across the UK, is so important. It is not just about the preservation of beautiful and precious things—important though this is. Rather, it is about the very essence of who we are in this country in the 21st century.

We cannot as a country go forward without understanding where we came from. Not just the broad sweep of history—good and bad. But also the detail, the meat on the bones of who we are.

This is perhaps a point best illustrated by reference to wider Oxfordshire. I have I know talked exclusively so far about Oxford. That is the trouble when you only look at heritage, and indeed identity, in headline, at the big historical events and the major institutions. There are only so many Ashmoleans.

But when I look at the heritage we have funded across Oxfordshire, the sense of identity rolls out beyond the city and the universities.

Our timeline expands back to the dinosaurs as the Earth Heritage Trails project links up the historic quarries spread across the county, including Stonesfield where the first dinosaur fossil was scientifically recognised. And it takes in the story of the industrial heritage of the county's quarries—from where the stone for much of the city's architecture came—being told to generations that have never known it.

The story of the blanket-making industry—an important part of life and the economy in Witney for over 300 years—recorded in the Witney and District museum when the last blanket-making factory closed in 2002.

And the bus museum at Long Hanborough with new buildings and a new Morris Motors Museum, dedicated to the products of the Cowley plant.

At Wittenham Clumps in Little Wittenham, the restoration of the 19th-century farmstead—the agricultural heritage which would have once fed this city—into a visitor and education centre and the protection of the ageing beech trees.

The purchase of Otmoor Nature Reserve near Beckley with HLF funds that will allow over 100 acres of arable land to be returned to wet grassland on the River Ray floodplain.

Not only supporting wildfowl but also restoring the land to how our ancestors would have seen and used it.

The stories of different communities—a Pegasus Theatre project that brought together young people in Blackbird Leys and East Oxford to explore elements of their African Caribbean cultural heritage through music, oral history, photography and theatre. Shared with others through public performances at the theatre.

The restoration of the Watercress beds at Ewelme, which used to produce watercress that was shipped across the country. And the creation of a volunteers' centre to encourage more local people to become actively involved in restoring the beds.

The preservation of the Oxfordshire County Archives with the creation of a bespoke centre in St Luke's Church in Cowley. An archive which includes the records of the Oxford Diocese and all surviving records of the administration of the country, amongst others.

It is a list that goes on and on, coherent only in its diversity and the value which has been put in its projects by the local people who have brought them to us. They've done so because they know that their identity is about more than spires. The identity of the county and its people, defined not for once solely by the university but by the land they came from, once farmed and lived on, the jobs they've done and the skills they had, the ecclesiastical and civic history of their lives and the broader histories and stories of the people who live in Oxfordshire now.

It is, like identity itself, multifaceted and complex but that is how it should be. And it is undeniably bigger, older and deeper than Brideshead.

In conclusion, the future.

This is where we are going as an organisation. Looking forward, the most important thing that we will do is to continue to fund the breadth of projects from the range of people that we do. To enable them to continue defining and understanding and strengthening their identity. That is what they tell us it is all about. It is certainly what it is about here in Oxfordshire.

I know that I am preaching today, thanks to Oxford Inspires, to the converted. We have it seems to me the same mission and I look forward to what we will continue to do together in the future.

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