The University and Cultural Life
The University and its colleges help to sustain a vibrant artistic and cultural environment in the city of Oxford.
Drama
The Oxford Playhouse, once the University theatre, is now a theatre for everyone, and the University remains a major financial supporter, including its community education programme.
The Cameron Mackintosh Drama Fund for Contemporary Theatre
This has helped some of the University’s brightest young actors, directors, producers and writers, stage shows during the annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The purpose of the Fund is to aid drama in Oxford and the students involved, by providing funding and by employing the University Drama Officer, who is the main contact between students involved in Oxford theatre and the University itself.
Find out more about The Chair of Contemporary Theatre at St Catherine's College
College Chapel choirs
Christ Church's Tom Tower
Musical scholarship in Oxford is supported by the chapel choirs, and in particular by the three choral foundations of Christ Church, Magdalen and New colleges.
Christ Church Cathedral choir is 500 years old and unique in the world as both a cathedral and college choir. The intimate acoustic of its musical home, Oxford’s 12th-century cathedral, has given it a relationship with early sacred music and the rhythm and vigour of contemporary idioms, which is second to none.
Magdalen College Chapel choir retains the same structure as when it was founded in 1480, with 16 boy choristers from Magdalen College School and 12 adult Academical Clerks who are undergraduates of the college. The chapel is among the University’s most active, with a congregation from the local community as well as further afield.
The choir of New College has gained a worldwide reputation and is known particularly for its stylish performances of Renaissance and Baroque music, with many recording commitments and a full programme of concerts in this country, on the continent of Europe and further afield.
University sports and the community
Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell receives a tour of the Iffley Road Sports Complex by Vice Chancellor Andrew Hamilton, Sir Roger Bannister and Rowing Captain Colin Smith
The University ensures its rich sporting tradition is fed back in to the community. The CommUniSports scheme, for instance, runs coaching and other sports projects in the local community, mainly with schools. More than 1,200 local children have taken part since it began in 2003, and the scheme has also worked with community groups such as the Oxford Crime Reduction Initiative.
Many University sports facilities are also accessible to Oxford residents. Around 400 local residents as well as University members use the University’s new gym, PULSE, and 350 Oxford residents with no University connections use the Rosenblatt Swimming Pool, the University’s high specification 25-metre pool. Local state schools have swimming lessons here free of charge during the school term. Plans for the expansion of the Iffley Road sports complex will hopefully allow the University to expand sports provision to local people.
The London Olympic Games Organising Committee has included the University as an approved training centre in the run up to the 2012 Games. The University is also looking to work with partners in the city and region to bring the Olympic torch to the University’s Iffley Road track, the site of Sir Roger Bannister’s 1954 sub-four-minute mile (left).
In 2008, more than 1,000 local people took part in Romano-British archaeological excavations at Marcham, Oxfordshire. Through demonstrations and hands-on participation, the process of excavation was explained and the material residue of human life explored
Find out more in "Continuing education at Oxford"