Do you call Oxford your home?

Each of us has our own story of how we’ve found, built or maybe even lost a home in Oxford. On Saturday 19th October, we’ll be weaving all of these stories together into issue two of ‘Oxford is my Home’, a community-made zine and we want your stories.

Join us any time between 10am and 4pm for a day of writing games, storytelling, poetry games and arts & crafts. We welcome all ages and abilities and you don’t need any prior experience of poetry or story-telling. If you don’t feel like you’d like to contribute your own story, why not come and help us tell someone else’s?

Whether you’re new to the city, born-and-bred, or anywhere in between, you’re invited to collaborate and create art, opinions, poetry, and stories around this complex and vital topic. The event is free and open to all.

Why? Many people come into Open House and ask us the same questions; ‘how can we solve homelessness? How can we build more affordable housing? Is anyone doing anything!?’ We think the answer lies in talking to each other. Oxford is full of people who are experts by lived-experience of how our housing system is failing and we won’t understand how to fix the sticky situation we’ve got ourselves into until we start listening to them.

Copies of the original issue of ‘Oxford is my home’ can be found at the Oxford Poetry Library at any of their local market appearances. You can see where our big purple bike of books will be next at oxfordpoetrylibrary.co.uk

Want to get involved but can’t make the date? Contact us on hello@openhouseoxford.org or oxfordpoetrylibrary@gmail.com

As with all events at Open House this event is free, however we do collect donations at the end of each event to cover speaker expenses and other running costs for Open House.
If you would like your bus fare to and from Open House refunding then please just ask one of our volunteers.

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Accessibility and making your trip as comfortable as possible.

Open House is a single room shop with large windows that face out onto Little Clarendon Street, a small shopping street. There is a small kitchen at the back with a single, unisex toilet. We sometimes play music quietly but are happy to turn it off or down on request.

Our front door is 87.5cm at the narrowest point and whilst the shop is accessible to wheelchairs, at present we unfortunately are not able to provide a fully wheelchair accessible toilet. There is a 1.5m walk to the toilet from the nearest wheelchair accessible area.

Directly outside the shop there are free 30 minute parking bays and the restriction ends at 18.00.

We are working to ensure that our events are as accessible as possible to all our visitors. Open House is a dry space and there will be no alcohol at events. We are happy to provide interpreters or BSL Interpreters but as a tiny, volunteer-led project we need advance notice. If you have any additional needs that you would like to discuss with us before visiting the shop, please email us hello@openhouseoxford.org