On What Grounds?
Come participate, help make your voice heard, listen to others, stories of our past, share your stories – this is our space to talk about the land – the spaces, both inside buildings and outside in nature – that we feel welcomed in, and excluded from; and what needs to change.
We’ve got 4 key themes throughout the month:-
30th Sept – 7th Oct : ACCESS TO COMMUNITY & ARTS SPACES
9th – 14th October: JUSTICE FOR ALL
17th – 21st October: FOOD, NATURE & WELLBEING
24th – 28th October: HOME & HOUSING JUSTICE
Check it out, follow us on insta @landjusticeox, share events with your friends and see you there!
We may add some more events in the coming days, so please check this page for updates!
If you have any questions about the accessibility of any events below, please get in touch with us at landjusticeox[@]gmail.com
https://oldfirestation.org.uk/whats-on/
On What Grounds? Exhibition Launch Party!
Friday 29th September, 6 – 8pm, The Old Fire Station
https://oldfirestation.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition-opening-land-justice-oxfordshire/
Come party with Land Justice Oxfordshire as we celebrate the launch of the exhibition. There’ll be a chance to meet new people, get a first peek at our exhibition, hear from contributors and get crafty!
If you’ve not met anyone in the collective before, or come on your own, don’t worry – we’re a friendly bunch and we’ll make sure you are welcomed in!
Free, no need to book, all welcome.
We’ll gather for drinks and food after – follow us on insta to make sure you know where to find us! @landjusticeox
Harvest Your Talents celebration
Sunday 01 October, 6pm – 8pm, St Mary and St Nicholas, Littlemore
As part of the Harvest of Talents celebration at Littlemore Church, a group of Littlemore residents are hosting an event to encourage the participation of artists, musicians and dancers in sharing creative expression in an evening of experimentation and discussion.
The themes for this gathering will be around our connection with the natural world as well as our dangerous disconnect from it. All are welcome, no registration required.
Find out more here.
Poetry Night: Exploring Land & Grief with LIT
Monday 02 October, 7.30pm, The Old Fire Station
Poetry Night: Exploring Land & Grief with LIT | Old Fire Station, Oxford(opens in a new tab)
LIT is a reading and writing group for cis and trans women, trans men, non-binary people, and people of other minority genders to share their own work and the work of others. We exist to empower and bring together people from a range of backgrounds, being as inclusive and accessible as possible through our online and in-person events.
Join us in our literary exploration of themes mirroring two exhibitions currently hosted at the OFS: 1) The interconnection between land, people, justice and ecology with Land Justice Oxfordshire; 2) Life, Death and Grief intertwined with “How Do You Feel Today” by Helen Packerman.
All or no experience with writing is welcome. Find out more here.
Discussion: What about community and art space in Oxfordshire?
Tuesday 03 October, 6:30 – 8:30pm, Old Fire Station
Land Justice Oxfordshire will host a discussion about the ongoing loss of community and arts spaces in our city – and how we can build a movement to ensure that space for us to meet, connect and create is understood as a right, not a privilege. We’ll have an intentional break 7:30-8pm for mingling and eating. If you bring food to share, it must be fully labelled with ingredients.
Please email landjusticeox[at]gmail.com with the subject ‘arts’ to reserve a spot. Free and all welcome, but limited capacity.
‘Know Your Trespass Rights’ workshop with the national Right to Roam campaign
Friday 06 October, 6.30 – 8.30pm, Fusion Arts, Gloucester Green
Know Your Trespass Rights Registration, Fri 6 Oct 2023 at 18:30 | Eventbrite(opens in a new tab)
Walk far enough in the English countryside and you’re bound to stumble on a sign saying “TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED”.
But did you know that trespass isn’t actually a criminal offence?
The Right to Roam campaign is a national campaign to bring a Right to Roam Act to England so that millions more people can have easy access to open space, and the physical, mental and spiritual health benefits that it brings.
Join Oxfordshire Right to Roam and Jon Moses, co-Director of the Right to Roam campaign, for a participatory workshop on understanding your rights to wander in the countryside – and how to respond if challenged.
This will be an interactive, participatory session, with plenty of time to ask questions of Jon and practice your skills!
The event is free but numbers are limited, so please RSVP to reserve a spot here.
Displaced: Docus, Dinner & Discussion
Mon 09 October, 6:30 – 9pm, Fusion Arts, Gloucester Green
Documentary screenings by award-nominated director Has @hasandfilm following two journeys from Lampedusa to Calais, followed by sharing food and exchange with the director, and practitioners supporting refugees and asylum seekers when they arrive in Oxfordshire.
What support is available for asylum seekers who arrive in Oxfordshire?
What can you, as a local resident, do in solidarity?
All welcome, but please reserve a spot here.
Zine Making workshop
Saturday 14 October, 2-4pm, The Old Fire Station exhibition space
Join local artist midge for a workshop to create zines – magazine on all things land justice. No experience needed, and we’ll provide the materials – just bring the creativity!
No need to register – just drop in. Free and all welcome.
Youth Outreach –
Private event
Saturday 14 October, 11am – 12.30pm
Find out more about the Young Women’s Music Project here.
The nature of boundaries: embodied explorations of Oxford’s Commons
Wednesday 18 October, 5.15 – 8pm, The Old Fire Station exhibition space
Ecosystems cannot be bottled up and separated from humans. In nature, boundaries are not impenetrable barriers, but rather permeable membranes for complex negotiations to occur across.
Cutting to the root causes of environmental destruction, nature conservation inspired by the Commons might actually stand a chance of addressing the biodiversity crisis – justly, and without the need of fences.
Join Mostly Moss Productions for a multi-sensory participatory workshop where we will explore the Nature of Boundaries.
We will begin with a talk from local historian Ciaran Walsh about Oxford’s Otmoor Riots – where in 1830 hundreds of local people tore down hedges and broke the barriers erected to help drain this common land just outside of Oxford.
Next, we will move on to a participatory meditation to re-common ourselves, using old dialect words describing hedgerows as inspiration for co-creating a tangled vision of a wild and open ecology for all. We’ll do this through games, drawing and writing a rag-tag hedgerow of our own to be displayed in Land Justice Oxfordshire’s exhibition at the Old Fire Station.
Finally, we will hear from Tom Ackland, Junior Ranger for Oxford City Council, about opportunities for volunteering at local wildlife sites around Oxford.
Places are limited so please register – email landjusticeox@gmail.com with the subject line ‘boundaries’ to reserve a spot.
Hackathon! Food, Nature and Wellbeing
Friday 20 October, 2 – 5pm. venue TBC
Food falls between the gaps in so many conversations – it often doesn’t fit directly into one policy making department – and yet food is impacted by, and impacts on health, wellbeing, links to access to green space and nature, and a sense of belonging and culture. It’s complex – and needs multiple heads together.
Join other practitioners in food, wellbeing and health, and nature, including those working on improving social prescribing services and on the right to food campaign, to look through the responses from the community consultation throughout our residency, and see if we can pollinate ideas from across multiple fields and collaborate to fill these gaps with vibrant green shoots of ideas…
Please email landjusticeox[@]gmail.com with the subject ‘hackathon’ to reserve a spot. Free and all welcome.
You Noble Diggers All – Confluence Cafe
Saturday 21 October, 14.30 – 17.00, St Luke’s Church, OX4
Confluence is a music collective that represents the diversity of musical cultures in Oxford.
Confluence tries to bring together all communities in Oxford (and further afield) to share music, dance, drama, poetry, food – anything that is an output of our communal cultural existence. We seek to challenge the divisive nature of the city of the dreaming dons and see all art forms and all manifestations of them in all cultures as equally valid. We run monthly in person cafes with a parallel Zoom so people can join from anywhere.
Confluence Cafe’s October gathering will be linking in with the exhibition. As land justice affects all of us in all communities we will seek to reflect that by gathering local and international songs, dances, poems and reflections that relate to this issue – starting with Gerard Winstanley but including artists from round the world who have worked with us on this subject.
Find out more details and RSVP here.
Shibori and eco-dyeing workshop in Nature
Sunday 22 October, 12 – 3, Bhandari Close Allotment site
Please join creative practitioners Patrick Mannion and Rosie McLean, in collaboration with Fig Studio, for nature-based dyeing and food as our colourful allotment transitions from Summer bloom to it’s Autumnal rest.
We invite you to the plot to have a go at shibori dyeing and eco bundle dyeing using the wonderful plants we’ve grown this year.
We will provide tea, coffee, cake and a soup cooking on the fire. Feel free to bring a vegetable to chuck in the soup pot and / or food to share! There will also be gazebos and seating in case the weather takes a turn.
It’s free to attend. Please book one of 25 available spots via this Eventbrite link.
This is a long term research and development project. In keeping with the Land Justice Exhibition themes of community, resilience, justice and ecology, the project aims to think about art-making as a holistic practice, in nurturing relationship with ourselves, the land and each other. You can read more about the project here.
The plot is located on the Bhandari Close allotment site. You can see the Lumigraph Tinctoria plot from the entrance gate – it’s on the right hand side tucked between the hedge and the polytunnel. Parking is limited so please find other ways to get there if you are able.
Building a movement for housing justice in Oxford
Thursday 26 October, 6.30-8pm, The Old Fire Station café
Oxford is one of the richest cities in the UK – with one of the worst housing crises. The average cost of a house over the last year, according to Rightmove data, was over half a million pounds (£588,555)
But there are solutions: groups in Oxford are already pushing for meaningful protections and rights for tenants, community and co-operative housing models, and other measures to reclaim more genuinely affordable housing in the city.
This event aims to forge connections between people and groups interested in housing issues, and to share and discuss actionable projects and proposals to build a movement for housing justice where we can bring more housing back into community control, for the benefit of all.
The event is free but numbers are limited due to room capacity, so please reserve a spot here.
Facing the world: Untold stories of hopeful work
Friday 27 October, 7 – 9.30pm, Oxford Quaker Meeting House
When the future is hard to face, what shape does hope take?
Join a range of Oxford activists for an evening exploring the work of hopefulness in this disturbed age. Ranging from the global to the local, we’ll hear stories of committed hope in the face of injustice, and explore together what they mean for the workers, ourselves, and our world, including stories from:
- Phil Pritchard on the British roads protests of the 1990s
- Sue Vermes on cultivating a school community in Rose Hill
- David Gee on fifty years of work to end the use of child soldiers
Free and no registration required – just come along. There will be cake.
What next for land justice?
Saturday 28 October, 1 – 2.30pm, The Old Fire Station exhibition space
As the exhibition winds to a close, Land Justice Oxfordshire will be hosting an informal, drop-in session to reflect on all the stories we’ve heard throughout the month and discuss what’s next for the land justice movement in our city.
No registration needed – just drop in. Free and all welcome.
Closing Shindig!
Saturday 28 October, evening, 7pm – 10pm, Florence Park Community Centre
Find out more and book tickets on the Eventbrite here!
We’re going to go out with a bang! Food, live music, more sharing and learning about stories from across the city, past and present and more dreaming for what land justice looks like to each us – everything a good night is made of.
Land and nature-themed fancy dress optional!
But that’s not the end…
Our aim is to build a strong, community-led movement for land justice in our county and beyond.
We don’t know what we’ll do next – but we’d love for you to be part of it.
Join our mailing list at the link above or email us at landjusticeox@gmail.com to hear about our upcoming meetings and get involved!
Land Justice Oxfordshire 
Leave a comment