Eight days of events kick off this Saturday (September 18) for Oxfordshire’s Great Big Green Week to encourage people to take action and help tackle the climate crisis.
Oxfordshire’s Green Week includes street fairs, woodland walks, public meetings, food festivals and workshops.
The launch event will be held in Broad Street Oxford at 1.45pm tomorrow and features music, theatre and speeches.
Just before the launch, at 12.30pm join the ‘Walk for Life on Earth’– a family-friendly walk and procession from Oxford train station via Bonn Square and the city centre to the launch at Board St. The Walk will be led by giant, colourful, endangered species (puppets and costumes) and everyone is welcome, bring a colourful banner!
This will be followed by a range of different events across Oxfordshire – Abingdon, Banbury, Chinnor, Eynsham, Faringdon, Henley, and Wallingford throughout the week that advocate for climate action, celebrate what is already being done and encourage people and organisations to protect and improve our environment.
It takes place five weeks before world leaders meet in Glasgow for the UN’s Climate Conference, and, as part of nationwide Green Week events, and aims to send the strongest possible messages to UK politicians and world leaders.
Suitable for grown-ups and the whole family, you’ll find something for all ages to engage with climate action.
Here are some of the highlights:
- 4 September – 11 October: Sign, Symbol, Sound – Modern Art Oxford and Oxford Brookes University – a collaborative online art exhibition co-created by Modern Art Oxford volunteers. Celebrating works by people from across Oxfordshire
- 17 September: Stand Up Comedy Night – Flock Comedy, 7:15pm, Eynsham Village Hall – An evening of stand-out stand-up comedy featuring four hilarious pro stand-up comedians as a fundraising event for Eynsham Nature Recovery Network.
- 18 September: Harvest of Talents, 10am – 3pm, St Mary and St Nicholas Church, Oxford – Pop in to view St Mary and St Nicholas Church’s annual local arts festival. This year’s theme is ‘The Environment’.
- Eco Phytogram Image-Making Workshops, 10-11am & 11:15am-12:15pm, Fusion Arts, Oxford – Explore the phytogram method, an environmentally friendly cameraless photographic process that creates beautiful botanical images on photographic paper. This process uses a homemade, non-toxic, sustainable image developer and does not require a darkroom. Choose from two time options. Suitable for adults and children aged 12+. More information here.
- The Westbury People’s Gallery open event, 2-4pm, 1 Westbury Crescent, Oxford – A community gallery in a suburban front garden enabling local artists to reflect on key issues of our time. They will be encouraging a reflection on our impending extinction and encouraging interested artists (professional and amateur) in the area to share about this. The gallery will be open every day 2-4pm during Green Week for visits.
- Art workshop: Imagine the future you would like to inhabit, 2-5pm, St Mary’s Church, Kirtlington – For all ages to reflect on the theme ‘Imagine the future you would like to inhabit’. Bring pencils, paints, modelling clay or recycled items for making things. Paper will be provided. More information here.
- Flotsam and Jetsam Voyage To The Trash Vortex, 3pm, Broad Street, Oxford – An interactive outdoor experience from WhatNot Theatre for all the family about recycling, with a pirate twist.
- 19 September: Monkion on the Meadows, 3-3:30pm, Christ Church Meadow, Oxford – A family-friendly, soul searching interactive show. The audience observe Monkion’s reaction to their release into the scary world of the outdoors, onto this ‘green carpet’, their discovery of the sun, and join them on their quest to discover what happiness is before their time is up and they must return to the attic!
- 25 September: Red Alert: Can the Arts Support Climate Action? A Participatory Dialogue, 10am-1pm, Fusion Arts, Oxford. A participatory art, storytelling and knowledge-sharing session. This event is for artists and members of the public to come together, collaborate on art, learn from each other and exchange ideas about how we can collectively address climate change. At this family-friendly event you will be able to try out a variety of eco-conscious artistic techniques and create art outside in Fusion’s yard.
- 25 September: The Lost Words: Nature and Poetry Workshop, 10am-1pm, Arts at the Old Fire Station, Oxford – Conjure the magic of nature through poetry! Ideal for 7-14 year olds and their parents/guardians, this 3-hour session combines nature identification skills, vocabulary building, and imaginative description using all five senses to explore nature. After a chat about the kind of creatures, creepy-crawlies, and all manner of living things we might be seeing, we will head out into a nearby green space to explore. We then return inside to create our own Lost Words-inspired poetry. More information here.
- 25 September: Hidden Songs by Liminal Creative, 10am, Broad Meadow, Broad Street, Oxford -A playful, interactive sound installation created by Liminal Creative and presented by OCM.
- 25 and 26 September: Flower Hour, (12.30-2.30pm Friday, 11am-12pm Saturday) The Story Museum, Oxford – Learn how to repurpose plastic bottles to create exquisite flower displays in a free workshop.
- 25 September: Compostable Art: Workshop and Exhibition, 2-5pm, 95 Gloucester Green, Oxford – Try your hand at making biodegradable papier-mâché art with artist Nor Greenhalg and visit this exhibition of inks, paints and sculpture materials all sourced from the East Oxford landscape. The window exhibition then runs from 25 September – 9 October.
- 26 September: Cyanotype Photography Workshop, 12-3pm, Fusion Arts, Oxford -In this three-hour workshop learn how to produce beautiful blue images using the non-toxic, environmentally-friendly Cyanotype photographic process. This workshop is suitable for adults, and children aged 12+ who are accompanied by an adult.
- 26 September: Red Alert: Environmental Art Public Viewing – This open-to-all art viewing session at Fusion Arts will look at the outcomes of environmentally conscious artwork that has been left outside for 24 hours.
There are also many non-arts Green Week events happening across the county, including street fairs, woodland walks, public meetings, food events and more. To see the full Green Week programme, head to http://greenweekoxon.co.uk/
For more information go to: https://greenweekoxon.co.uk/
