Robots, big questions and space tours: Oxford’s Oxplore Festival heads to Birmingham
The University of Oxford’s Oxplore Festival, a travelling event designed to inspire and motivate young people to think about higher education, including Oxford, is taking place in Birmingham this week, on Wednesday, 8 and Thursday, 9 July.
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The two-day event at Joseph Chamberlain College gives hundreds of local school pupils the chance to meet Oxford students and researchers and explore higher education through hands-on activities. The festival is aimed at 11–13-year-olds in Years 7 and 8, with around 600 pupils from 17 local state schools expected to attend.
The Oxplore Festival launched in 2024 and is one of a number of Oxford University initiatives that aims to work with schools to support academic enrichment and attainment. The event visits regions of the UK where fewer students currently go on to study at Oxford. In 2025, students from the West Midlands made up 6.3% of UK undergraduates admitted to Oxford. The festival has previously visited Bodmin, Bradford and Warrington.
The Oxplore Festival is hosted by almost 80 Oxford staff, students and researchers, combining interactive workshops and activities with a hands-on exhibition and an opportunity to get up close to a humanoid robot from the Oxford Robotics Institute which will bring Oxford research to life.
In the exhibition, stalls engage pupils on subjects from the Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences including Particle Physics, Chinese Calligraphy, Medicine, and more. Participants can try taking ‘blood’ from an artificial arm, discuss whether aliens really do exist, put their thinking skills to the test in the Philosophy Zone or take a whistle-stop tour of the Solar System in a mobile planetarium.
Oxford’s Keble College, which works with teachers, schools and pupils across the West Midlands through the ‘Oxford for West Midlands’ scheme, is also attending to share more about life and study at an Oxford college.
The event complements the University’s wider outreach work in Birmingham. Since 2024, Oxford has been working in partnership with Swanshurst School and six other schools across Birmingham, Bradford and Oldham to support Key Stage 4 students of Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage. At Swanshurst, the programme has to-date engaged more than 700 Year 10 students, with a small group of students from the cohort taking part in a two-day academic residential visit to Oxford earlier this year.
Dr Samina Khan MBE, Director of Undergraduate Admissions and Outreach at the University of Oxford, who taught science at Sutton Coldfield College early in her career, said: ‘We’re delighted to be bringing the Oxplore Festival to Birmingham this summer. The West Midlands is home to many talented young people and through events like this we want to encourage pupils to explore their curiosity, discover new ideas and see higher education as something that is open to them. By giving them the chance to engage directly with Oxford researchers, students and hands-on activities, we hope to broaden their horizons and help them imagine where their interests could take them.’
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