With cases rapidly rising across Oxfordshire, the County Council and Layla Moran, MP for Oxford-West and Abingdon, have strongly urged all 18 to 30 year olds to get a PCR test this weekend regardless of whether they have symptoms or not. To facilitate this, three mobile testing centres have been opened.
Over the last two weeks, cases in Oxford have risen six-fold, although the number of severe cases continues to remain stable. Nonetheless, the increased infectivity of the Delta-variant has slowly been driving up hospitalisations nationwide.
The rise in cases in Oxfordshire is largely concentrated amongst younger age groups and the unvaccinated. With many of the cases being amongst younger, less vulnerable, individuals, one in three new cases are asymptomatic – allowing the virus to spread undetected.
To prevent further spread and protect the vulnerable, Ansaf Azhar, Oxfordshire County Council’s Director for Public Health, announced the opening of three new mobile testing centres over the weekend.
The three new testing centres are open from 10am to 8pm this weekend. The centres are operating on a walk-in basis and will not require an appointment. These are located at:
– Blavatnik School of Government, Walton Street
– South Park (St Clements end)
– Oxpens car park
Apart from the mobile testing centres, the Oxford Brookes University and Osney Lane testing centres continue to be open every day from 8am to 8pm. These centres require an appointment to be booked in advance.
Finally, the Council and Moran emphasise the importance of getting vaccinated as soon as possible. The walk-in vaccination centres at Iffley Sports Centre and Mansfield Road continue to be open and provide first doses for those who have yet to receive one. Further information on the University’s vaccination centres can be found here .
A couple of hours before watching Track 2, I saw a friend’s Instagram story pointing out the comments on a post from the official 10 Downing Street account. The post celebrated the ‘extraordinary contribution of LGBT’ people to Britain, but the comments were full of the kind of vitriolic homophobia that it’s hard to believe still exists in public spaces. It is this kind of hate, as well as the prevalence of outright racism, especially in online spheres, that makes projects like the Black Lives Playlist essential.
Track 2 is, primarily, a monologue about the experience of being Black and gay. It centres around The Speaker’s complex inner turmoil between shame and pride in his sexuality. Whilst we may now fortunately live in a world where homosexuality is far more accepted, this play serves as an important reminder that prejudice still very much exists in our society,and that microagressions can have serious consequences especially where marginalised identities intersect.
In spite of this, Track 2 never feels like a PSA about homophobia or racism. Instead, its character-driven nature is relatable to anyone who has ever felt out of place at a family party; anyone who’s questioned what they really want from life; anyone who’s kissed someone they didn’t really like and regretted it; anyone who’s looked at themself in the mirror mid-breakdown and thought, actually, they look kind of hot. This is the play’s greatest strength: writer Sam Spencer manages to both convey a very specific life experience and connect with universal feelings of anxiety and difference.
The Speaker tells us about a day spent visiting his sister’s boyfriend’s family for the first time – an experience that sparks complex emotions and difficult memories. This central narrative introduces us to the story of his ex-boyfriend, and a rendez-vous with a man from the gay hook-up app Grindr who asks The Speaker some difficult questions. Each of these narrative strands ties together cohesively. Credit must go to Spencer for creating a plot that plays out in such a satisfying manner, and to director James Newbery and assistant-director Grace Olusola for translating it onto the stage so effortlessly.
The different visions of the show’s team work flawlessly together. With one-person shows, especially those performed and directed by different people, it’s easy for conflicting creative visions to come across in the finished product, but no such issue exists here. The use of music adds to the piece brilliantly, and the colourful lighting accentuates the vivid narrative, although the lighting could perhaps have been used to accentuate key moments to a greater extent, and mark transitions between time periods more clearly. Yet, the collaborative nature of the project translates into a show that knows what it wants to be, and executes this vision immaculately.
The greatest strength of the direction is its simplicity: the story is allowed to speak for itself, which is essential to its success. Spencer’s script never tries to be overly clever or conceptual, instead relying on its innately heartfelt character development and engaging humour. He has a talent for visceral description, making both messy hookups and family dinners crystal clear in audiences’ minds, despite the minimalist staging: The Speaker remains sat alone in a dark space throughout. The script is structured very cleverly, with the hook-up acting as a frame that gains new meaning at the end, and the sister’s boyfriend storyline leading us craftily to an emotional climax. In addition to this, Spencer’s mixing of personal anecdotes with general thoughts on the likes of Stonewall statistics and making out with girls helps the writing sit so perfectly on the line between specific and universal. If I were to be especially fussy, it could be said that the script becomes slightly repetitive at times. Some elements, such as the use of the Grindr sound effect, could do with verbal clarification for audiences less familiar with the app, and the ideas around religion could have been fleshed out further. It remains, however, a remarkable piece of writing.
Spencer also performs his writing with a real honesty, transitioning smoothly between a public-facing cheekiness and moments of serious emotional depth – there are points where we feel genuine concern for him. The only things subtracting from the performance are some issues with awkward cuts and poor sound quality – the choppy switches between cuts takes us out of a few important moments, and dialogue with the off-screen voice in the first scene is at times hard to make out. These flaws can be easily forgiven, though; the show would work seamlessly in person, but we are unfortunately still gradually exiting the age of online theatre.
Like every other theatre fan, I’ve watched a lot of filmed monologues over the last year and a half. The influence of the likes of Fleabag can be felt within this piece (what would a review of a monologue be without a reference to Phoebe Waller-Bridge or Michaela Coel?), but it’s clear that the team have taken into consideration the limits and possibilities of the form and made it work for them. With its cohesive structure, engaging character and unfaltering honesty, Track 2 takes its place as one of the best examples of what has become an era-defining genre.
Cherwell can reveal that Lincoln College hosted a wedding on the same day that the College closed to visitors due to rising COVID-19 cases across Oxford University.
The College closed to visitors from 10:15 on 26 June, following a “sharp increase” of COVID-19 cases. This includes visitors to College sites, including the Carfax Quarter “until further notice”, with exceptions for family and friends who are collecting students to return home for the vacation.
An email sent to Lincoln students, which was shown to Cherwell, warned: “Lodge staff will challenge you and your visitor(s) if you do not adhere to this. This would be embarrassing for you and your visitor(s), so please bear this in mind.”
Wedding guests inside the entrance to Lincoln College. Image used with permission from the owner.
The College Chapel can be booked by current students, staff, alumni, and fellows for weddings, baptisms, and blessings. It has a capacity of 80 people.
Restrictions on weddings and civil partnerships have been eased from 21 June. The law no longer sets out a maximum number of guests who can attend. Instead, venues will have to determine the number of guests who can attend while maintaining social distancing practices. The guidance still advises against “congregational and communal singing”, and dancing other than the couple’s ‘first dance’.
Wedding guests in the Lincoln College lodge. Image used with permission from the owner.
A spokesperson for Lincoln College told Cherwell: “Following a sharp increase in Covid cases among students within the last week, the College took the difficult decision at 3pm on Friday 25th June to cancel all remaining student events planned for 25th June to 2nd July. We very much regret the disappointment that is felt by students, fellows, and all college staff alike to this change of plan, which was taken to reduce the cases of transmission.
“A wedding was held in Lincoln College Chapel on Saturday, 26 June 2021. The ceremony complied with current covid regulations and was subject to a detailed risk assessment. The College does not host receptions after weddings and the guests left the College after the wedding ceremony in the Chapel.”
The final week of Trinity term saw an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases reported across Oxford University. At a meeting of the Conference of Colleges, cases were described as having “exploded”.
Some colleges which had planned to allow students to stay beyond the end of term have urged them to return home. The University’s coronavirus advice page is encouraging students to take a lateral-flow test before leaving Oxford. Events such as finalists’ dinners have also been postponed or cancelled.
34% of tests taken between 21-25 June were positive, leading to 109 cases being identified. This takes the total number of cases recorded by the University’s Early Alert System since 20 August 2020 to 1,415.
Image: Early Alert System
In Oxfordshire, 503 COVID-19 cases were reported over the weekend of 26 June. The infection rate in the county stands at 5,225 cases per 100,000, which is lower than the average in England of 7,350 per 100,000 people.
The Acting Rector of Lincoln College, David Hills, asked students who had planned to stay after term ended, especially for social reasons, to consider returning home. All dinners, evensong, and garden parties were cancelled. The College was closed to visitors from 10:15am on 26 June.
15% of students at Hertford College were isolating as of 25 June across the main site and College accommodation in South Oxford. Principal Tom Fletcher announced in an email to students that the finalists’ dinner, schools’ dinners, and a cricket match on 27 June have been postponed.
Jamie Clarke, the Hertford bursar, advised students to leave College residences “as soon as is practicable”. Undergraduate students had previously been allowed to stay until 30 June.
At Jesus College, the freshers’ dinner, halfway hall, giving dinner, and schools’ dinner were all cancelled due to rising cases within the College.
Helena, a history and politics student at Jesus, expressed her frustration at the rising number of cases in her College on Twitter. “Help I’m stuck on a plague ship and someone’s set it on fire”, she tweeted after learning she needed to self-isolate.
She told Cherwell: “I went into isolation as a close contact after a friend tested positive on Wednesday 23rd June, and tested positive myself the following Sunday, extending my isolation period from ten days to sixteen at least. I’ve been lucky to have no symptoms (as of yet) but while much focus is on the physical impact of isolation, I’ve found the mental impact far worse – the constant lateral flow testing, wearing a mask around the flat, and waiting for symptoms to potentially manifest is emotionally draining, not to mention the effects of being stuck in one small room. It’s especially difficult as someone who suffers from chronic pain and mental health issues – and I’ve struggled to find support resources for people like myself in this position.
“It’s particularly gutting that this outbreak has come at the end of Trinity – I lost the end of my first year to the COVID crisis, and now my second year has been tainted too. Both my best friend and boyfriend are leaving Oxford at the end of this year and it feels like I’ve been robbed of time with them.
“It’s especially difficult watching people leave for the vac from my fourth floor window, unable to say goodbye or have any sort of meaningful sendoff. I’d always wanted to stay in Oxford into eleventh week, but I’d never thought it would be quite like this.”
The Warden of Wadham College told students it was “imperative that all UK undergraduate and taught PGT graduate students who have completed their exams should take a lateral flow test and, if negative, should return home as soon as possible”. The College had previously planned to allow students to stay until the end of 10th week. However, the Warden warned students that staying would put “[themselves], [their] friends, and our staff at risk”.
The Magdalen COVID-19 Working Group “strongly recommends” that students leave College “no later than 28 June”. Exceptions could be made for students who had travel arrangements which could not be rescheduled, were self-isolating, or who had commitments to the University or College.
At St Catherine’s College, 23 positive cases were reported as of 28 June, including among students living out. 16 households, comprising 121 students, have been ordered to isolate. An email from the Dean and Home Bursar said: “We will continue to do what we can to help and support you – as usual, the Porters can be contacted at any time of the day, and the Junior Deans are around and happy to talk.”
The Dean of St Hugh’s College received reports that some students who tested positive had not isolated in their room. Some had even returned home after a member of their household tested positive. According to an email seen by Cherwell, anxiety surrounding people not abiding by COVID restrictions has caused some students at St Hugh’s to “[take] matters into their own hands by shouting and telling fellow students off”. Professor Perera asked students not to assume that people who left their rooms were breaking the rules, and told students to report suspected rule-breakers to him or the Lodge.
Further advice for students in Oxford and those looking to return home can be found here.
On the drizzly Friday afternoon of 18th June, six local Oxford residents who are also refugees or asylum seekers doubled as tour guides and took local community and political leaders around organisations and locations that were vital to them as newcomers in the community. Among those present were Lord Mayor of Oxford, Councillor Mark Lygo, and five other Oxford City Councillors.
The walking tour was organised by Asylum Welcome, an Oxford-based charity for refugees and asylum seekers, to give local leaders a glimpse into the experiences of refugees living in Oxford.
The walk spanned seven locations: Asylum Welcome’s office; The Porch, a homelessness service that provides food parcels to refugees; Oxford Mutual Aid, an organisation that provides emergency food parcels; Restore, a mental health charity; East Oxford Community Centre, a centre with an “Open Door” café for refugees; Refugee Resource, a charity that specialises in trauma therapy and women’s support; and Za’atar Bake, a popular Cowley café and bakery where Asylum Welcome’s tour guides and staff members, staff from other Oxford refugee charities, and the City Councillors all sat down to share food and reflections.
Refugees as partners, not participants
A recurring message in the walk was how refugees can enrich the cultural, economic, and social lives of the communities they find themselves in.
“Refugees are not participants in the community, they are partners,” said Maya, a refugee from Kenya. Five years since she first came to the UK to seek asylum, Maya is now pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Community Development and Youth Work at Ruskin College. She has also completed a placement at Asylum Welcome.
“So much of the dialogue [about refugees] today is so negative,” said Holywell Councillor Edward Mundy, who also volunteers at Asylum Welcome, working on education initiatives. He said he was worried about when discourse surrounding refugees goes “too far the other way”, when “people think of refugees as people who are needy without anything to offer.”
Michael, a Zimbabwean asylum-seeker, shared about how during the COVID-19 lockdown, he drove around delivering free food parcels to the community. During the Christmas holiday, he also helped with Pitt Rivers Museum’s Multaka-Oxford project, a project that relies on volunteers to give tours, provide perspectives, and conduct research about a collection of Islamic scientific instruments and Arabic textiles.
Michael has been waiting for an asylum decision from the Home Office since 2014. As an asylum-seeker, apart from £39.63 per week on a payment card for essentials, he has “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) and no legal right to paid work.
“Despite our hardships, we are still able to smile, go out, and help the community we live in,” Michael said.
Multiple Councillors criticised the NRPF policy when interviewed after the walk. Donnington Councillor Lucy Pegg, St Mary’s Councillor Chris Jarvis, and Holywell Councillor Imogen Thomas all stressed that barring asylum seekers from public funds, and therefore from benefits, and housing assistance also limits how much local Councillors can help these constituents. “The central government has ripped away the ability for local governments to do meaningful things that will improve people’s lives,” Jarvis said.
Pegg saw one of her responsibilities as “mak[ing] sure that everyone in our community knows that they can come to councillors for help”, and encouraged fellow councillors to direct refugees and asylum seekers “in the direction of the services that do exist”. Thomas emphasised what Councillors could do to provide support “as citizens”, including “volunteering, listening to stories, and following up on whatever [one] can do.”
Councillor Mark Lygo, Lord Mayor of Oxford, reads a recipe book by members of Refugee Resource’s Women’s Service while sitting on the floor of their office. Credit: Joshua Low
The New Plan for Immigration
The walk took place in the context of the UK Government’s plan to overhaul its immigration and asylum system, which carries potentially immense ramifications for refugees and asylum seekers. In March, the Home Office announced its New Plan for Immigration, which was open to public consultation for six weeks and expects to be brought before Parliament in the autumn.
Among the Plan’s proposed measures are the branding of asylum seekers who pass through a “safe country” before reaching the UK as “illegal” and “inadmissible”, as well as sending them to reception centres with “basic accommodation” to be — wherever possible — removed from the UK. Asylum Welcome has raised concerns about the use of these centres, saying that they are “unsafe, crowded, often remote, with no Wi-Fi” and “unsuitable for those who have been through traumatic situations.”
“[The Plan] is criminalising migration. It is criminalising suffering,” said Councillor Mundy.
During the walk, tour guide Maya described her experiences in an immigration detention centre as “traumatic” and “abusive” as she suffered from mental health issues and was refused vital medication by the authorities, to the extent that she “didn’t know who she was”. A medical justice doctor later successfully intervened for her release from the facility.
Nine immigration detention centres are currently used by the Home Office to house foreign nationals awaiting asylum decisions or deportation. According to The Migration Observatory, in 2019, 24,400 people entered immigration detention in the UK, the lowest number since 2009. Around one-third of immigration detainees are held for longer than 28 days. Campsfield House, an immigration detention center in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, was closed in 2018 after a 25-year long battle by local activists.
Oxford as a Sanctuary City
At Za’atar Bake, Thomas, a Labour Councillor, reiterated her support for Oxford’s City of Sanctuary status, which the Council voted to declare in 2008: “I am very happy that Oxford is a City of Sanctuary. We welcome people, and we do not abide by hostile, Tory policies on immigration.”
The tour guides also reflected on how they benefited from Oxford’s support for refugees. Maya positively highlighted the city’s network of services of local charities and organisations, calling Oxford “a city that helps refugees”. Muradi, a refugee from Syria, spoke about her family’s struggle to find a safe place, describing their flight to the UK as “a dream becoming real”. She also compared receiving the hospitality of Asylum Welcome to being “in my parents’ house”, and called for “more government support” for the charity.
Guides and staff at refugee-supporting charities voiced ways for Oxford to improve conditions for refugees and asylum seekers as well. Sushila Dhall, Capacity Building Lead and Counsellor at Refugee Resource, strongly urged for more “good, safe, secure housing” options for newcomers, pointing out that refugees, including those with children, sometimes stay on the streets or in unfit housing with abusive households.
Asylum Welcome Education and Employment Officer Nicky Barnetson (in blue) describes to the walking group outside the East Oxford Health Centre the issues refugees face, including destitution and homelessness. Credit: Joshua Low
A Day Of Listening
“Today has been a day of listening”, Councillor Thomas reflected after the tour.
She described a personal conversation with one of the tour guides, who asked her how many siblings she had. “I said, one, only to realise that the person I was speaking to lives in a different country from her family,” Thomas recounted. “[This] everyday question actually had a sad history behind it. Digging a bit deeper, they also unfortunately had to miss the passing of their father. I can’t imagine how painful it must be to grieve in a different country from your loved one.”
For Councillor Pegg, the walk showed her the “on-the-ground action” happening in Oxford to “help migrants and refugees navigate a system that just seems to be built against them” and helped bring home “the human side” to refugee stories.
Also important, Pegg stated, was the necessity for fellow Oxford residents to remember the interconnectedness between themselves and refugees who share their community. She cites the example of global climate change, one of her core concerns as a Green Party Councillor, noting how it impacts the rise in numbers of asylum seekers and refugees, many of whom are from developing countries.
“Refugees and migrants have specific problems, but they also experience the same problems that all other people living in Oxford experience. It’s all linked up to the broader things that we face.”
Image: Joshua Low
This article has been updated on 3/7/2021 to clarify Michael’s situation.
Meet Jeanne de Kroon and Madhu Vaishnav, women who strive to remind us that fashion, much like food, comes from the earth, and that the most beautiful garments are those that tell stories. Amsterdam based Jeanne, founder of Zazi Vintage, started her business with 500 euros in her pocket in her student bedroom in Berlin. From a young age, her fashion journalist turned art-historian mother instilled in her a love for the beauty and magic of fabrics that tell stories, she had a preconceived idea of what fashion is, but this fantasy was soon shattered. After dropping out of law school and immersing herself in la vie bohème in Paris playing the ukulele and singing on street corners, she was scouted to model and was taken to New York where she posed for fast fashion brands in $10 polyester dresses. She found herself questioning that if these dresses cost so little to buy, how much did the people who make it earn?
She then stopped modelling and went on to study philosophy. During her studies, Jeanne travelled to India and was introduced to Madhu Vaishnav by one of her 200 Instagram followers at the time. It was an instant meeting of minds and hearts, together they embarked on a journey of learning, growing and empowering women through the beauty of creating garments that travel directly from the earth to our bodies. Being a woman in a rural village near Jodhpur, Madhu had a traditional and conservative upbringing: she had an arranged marriage at the age of 23 and was told that her future consisted of being a housewife. After craving freedom and the opportunity to study, she was finally granted permission to learn English, and at the age of 39 she was accepted to do a diploma in social welfare at UC Berkeley. Upon her return in 2015, she started the Saheli Women initiation in her village, in which a group of women learnt how to embroider and make garments. Slowly but surely, cultural norms were being broken by women in a society that was run by men. Zazi is a love letter to artisanal work, it gives a platform to those without one while bridging the gap between the creators and buyers of garments.
1. The terms ‘ethical fashion’ and ‘sustainability’ are thrown around by brands such as H&M and Zara who gratuitously greenwash. To be truly ethical, brands must demonstrate transparency and evidence of working conditions. How would you define the term ‘ethical fashion’?
Jeanne: “For me, fashion is a woven story that you tell as a brand. Ethical fashion is when you are facilitating the stories of the products and the people in the community in the most authentic way. There are two pillars when it comes to fashion: land and labour, and if you take these two things into account and really come on top as a brand to co-create something rather than dictate it, that is the true meaning of ethical fashion. It’s the same with food… when something is ethical it’s wholesome and nourishing for the entire community and the earth that produces it. This mindset of symbiosis with land and labour is an essential part of the global decolonisation process as well as a global rising of consciousness to connect people to the garment they are wearing.”
2. The exploitative nature of fast fashion brands is no longer a dirty little secret, yet they still buy clothes from such brands that exploit women and land. Can you think of an effective deterrent for people to actively stop supporting fast fashion?
Jeanne: “We tend to point fingers at specific big fast fashion brands when actually the global fashion industry works in the same way – for example high fashion brands like Prada produce their clothes and uses the same sorts of chemical dyes as fast fashion brands, they may add the finishing touches in Italy however the process is pretty much the same. The whole system of global fashion is complicit in terms of waste, it’s a vicious cycle in which consumerism is the culprit.”
Madhu: “The responsibility is on the young generation, and new businesses. It must be a collective effort with the producers, artisans and brands who sell the clothes. With Saheli women we tell the story of where the garment comes from, all the garments have the women’s sketches and stories behind them. We need to build the relationship between consumer and creator.”
3. Humans are wired to connect to stories. How can one facilitate a connection between the buyer and the maker?
Jeanne: “We have a conditioned gaze with which we look at fashion, which has only existed in the last 100 years. As a brand, we are thinking about how we can put the farmers and weavers in the limelight, so they can tell their own stories. For me Zazi is an amazing place and opportunity to learn about these dynamics and be aware of it myself while going through my own process of decolonisation. I said to Madhu when she was struggling in the beginning that she could work with a big commercial company to make napkins for example, so you always have a stable income and you know that the women can do that. She then said to me ‘Jeanne, this isn’t a factory. My ladies don’t care, they would get bored.’ That really proved that in a Western capitalist society we would rather do what we hate just to put food on our plates.”
4. Western feminism is centralised around women being successful within a patriarchal, capitalist society. From what I know of the way your brand operates, it values ‘feminine’ qualities such as love, respect, and compassion to succeed. Do you believe a feminist can authentically succeed in a capitalist society without compromising her morals?
Jeanne: “No. On a spiritual level the world is cyclical, which is the feminine force of beauty, life and nourishment. Women and the moon move on 29.5-day cycles, that’s the magic of the moon and the menstrual cycle. The masculine however works with the day and night: testosterone goes up as far as it can go and then sleeps and repeats this every day, and our system is built through male energies. Unlimited growth doesn’t work in any system, we need to work within the cycle of nature rather than against it. We are starting to see a deconstruction of all the systems that were man made, and by raising the voices of women we will be able to rise as a global community in a more balanced way. In the past few years, the world has seen so many shifts and it’s just the very beginning of what’s about to come.”
Madhu: “Women are born with the opportunity to make everything possible. It’s part of our DNA, if we can deliver children in this world, we can do anything. Women are the best managers, we manage the home, pregnancy, periods, family – Saheli women is run by women from top to bottom. I have learnt a lot from these ladies, even though some of them are illiterate I’ve learnt that intelligence doesn’t come from academic language and going to good schools. They are the most open minded and non-judgemental people: they have cultural competency and humility which is so important to learn. Women nurture everything – creativity is part of our DNA. In our studio we do not have a single amount of waste material – we don’t need a third party to create a sustainability model for us as that is naturally the way we operate, and this is mainly because we are a female-led organisation.”
5. How will the industry change in the next few years?
Jeanne: “My big dream is to create a platform where consumers can directly buy from artisans, this would make artisanal work more affordable and it would be possible to have 100% rural supply chains, and we would no longer have to mass-produce. Once we can decolonise the supply chain, artisanal communities can be self-sufficient without a person like me (white and European) to make it happen.”
Madhu: “It’s changing a lot. The pandemic has taught the consumer to think about how they are consuming. Now is the time for small businesses to grow again, it’s almost criminal the way big companies machine copy designs made by small designers by using factories: art is someone’s livelihood, it is so wrong to cheaply copy art using machines and sell it cheaply.”
6. Who designs the clothes at Saheli women?
Madhu: With every garment, all the women are very involved in the designing and aesthetics of them, they have so much knowledge about technicalities. Even though the brand sells the clothes, it is us who works with the garments every single day, and we understand the nature of textiles, stitching, design, fabric and all their complications so well. Our master designer called Shoba is from the Dalit community (known as the untouchables) which is the lowest caste in India. She’s a widow with two children and for many years she was living outside the village and she was disrespected and that her job was nothing more than to just sweep roads. On a grassroot level, caste discrimination still exists very much; the teacher at the centre refused to teach Shoba in the beginning because of her caste. Now, however, she is a role model for the community: she is a master pattern cutter and embroiderer. This proves that creativity is inherently part of us.
Jed Mercurio talked to the Oxford Union on 4th June. The highly acclaimed TV writer of Cardiac Arrest, Line of Duty and Bodyguard spoke about his career path to success. He trained as a doctor before writing medical and police dramas for the small screen.
The six-time BAFTA nominated screenwriter told the Oxford Union that his directing style was influenced by American dramas, including Hill Street Blues and Star Trek which brought together action and sci-fi, leading Mercurio to add a sense of dynamism to his work. In spite of Mercurio’s partiality to television dramas, he said he showed little creativity at school and trained as a doctor. The writer said his change from medical to artistic professions was partially catalysed by a lack of realistic depictions of the NHS frontline in contemporary television.
Jed Mercurio depicted the NHS frontline in Cardiac Arrest, which he said received a polarised and “marmite” reception among the medical community. Mercurio said it represented the burden of work upon junior doctors, a group who were receptive to the programme. Mercurio did not argue that Cardiac Arrest represented the realities of medical life and stressed the differentiation between drama and reality. Instead, he believes “drama is much more usefully about point of view”, rather than seeking accurate depictions of reality.
When questioned further about depicting point of view in television dramas, Mercurio argued that the setting of The Grimleys in the Black Country and Line of Duty in the west-midlands gave a unique point of view of an underrepresented region on screen and showed the region’s talent.
As well as representing a specific region, Mercurio’s dramas also tend to depict specific and familiar institutions – the NHS and the police. When asked by Cherwell what catalysed the change from writing medical to police dramas, Mercurio said “when I was doing medical dramas I tried to create the idea that bad things could happen to the doctors through making mistakes and getting blamed for it… with the police it is a hazardous job: you’re interacting with dangerous people so, as a writer it is a little bit easier to create scenes which are tenser”.
He told the audience that he spoke to retired police officers and used the internet to pinpoint a “target culture” within policing which Mercurio represents in Line of Duty. Mercurio said he used this information to create a “drama of reassurance with honest coppers getting bad guys” whilst simultaneously depicting corruption within the police. Mercurio added that his dramatic intention in Line of Duty’s exposition of corruption was to expose its complexity and close relationship to incompetence. When Cherwell asked the screenwriter who Mercurio’s favorite corrupt member of the police force was, he commented that most of the ‘bent’ coppers were not truly ‘bent’, just misunderstood or incompentent.
Mercurio spoke of the complexities of depicting police corruption. Cherwell asked the screenwriter whether on-screen representations of anti-corruption officers overly-glamorizes the police. Mercurio argued “the main characters believe in doing the job right and they believe in catching the bad guys who do just happen to be police officers, so, in that sense, they’re showing the ideals of policing rather than all the vices of policing.”
Mercurio told the Oxford Union that he tried to draw comparisons between real life policing and on-screen policing. He spoke of parallels between the deaths of Stephen Lawrence and Christopher Alder in racially-motivated attacks and the plot and name of Christopher Lawrence in Line of Duty’s season six. Mercurio desires his audience to recognise and research these parallels to real life attacks, wanting them to consider the United Kingdom’s public institutions carefully. As well as negotiating Line of Duty’s plot, Mercurio spoke of negotiating Covid-19 when filming season six. Filming the sixth and latest season of Line of Duty was disrupted in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Mercurio believed that, though it did not alter any trajectories for characters it did create limitations in filming intimate moments on screen. He discussed the multiplicity of challenges faced by screenwriters and told the Oxford Union that failures should be recognised and considered inevitable in any writing process. He advised budding TV writers and directors to write, shoot and edit short films cheaply with friends.
‘I just remember walking home one evening and thinking, I need to write about this, I need to talk about this openly, because I cannot be the only one that feels this internal turmoil and this anxiety about money,’ Otegha Uwagba tells me at the start of our call. The sensation that she describes – this undercurrent of anxiety surrounding money – is one that feels personally quite close to home.
Otegha Uwagba is a two-time author, soon to be three, and all-around powerhouse. Her debut book, Little Black Book, made the Sunday Times bestseller list. Having spent several years in the advertising industry, she made a career change in 2016, launching her now-defunct working women’s collective Women Who and beginning her writing career. She runs the podcast In Good Company, where she interviews women about their work, although in its second season the podcast has broadened its remit to include the arts and culture more generally. For those that might want to pursue a career in media, Otegha Uwagba is the picture of success.
This perceived success is not something that Uwagba necessarily feels reflected the reality of her early writing career. ‘I just felt such a disconnect between the external persona that I was projecting and that people perceived, which was kind of this young, debut, author, and you’ve got interviews and book launches, […] which is really exciting and shiny, and just my internal anxiety about money, and what my future was going to look like. I didn’t know where my career was going to go.’
In her new ‘money memoir’ We Need to Talk About Money, set for release on July 8th, Uwagba charts her life so far through the lens of her relationship with money and work. The book, which I read after our conversation, is consistently and unapologetically honest. Uwagba never fails to shy away from the complexity of emotion that can surround money, class, and work, and with every chapter’s ending she eschews easy conclusions in favour of direct, telling honesty. Given the current vogue for discussing money and work online, as reflected in the publication of books including Sarah Jaffe’s Work Won’t Love You Back and the success of projects like Chelsea Fagan’s The Financial Diet, part of me expected the book to reach some easier to digest points – but per Uwagba’s signature approach, she refuses to oversimplify her experiences.
In the book’s second chapter, Uwagba describes her time at Oxford as a woman from a privately-educated background (she attended one of London’s top private schools on a scholarship). ‘I soon came to understand the significance of ‘the school question’, and the way that other students – mostly those who’d been privately educated – would politely ask about where you’d gone to school. Both question and answer are proxies, a fairly unsubtle way of probing into someone’s background and signalling your own credentials, as well as potentially unearthing any mutual connections; I am convinced that the privately educated in Britain are only ever two degrees of separation from each other’.
Although Uwagba graduated some time ago, this experience is one that every fresher here continues to encounter. Whether it be in our current government, or in more local spaces like The Oxford Union, it is difficult to escape the long-term connections fostered by Britain’s omnipresent private school network. When I asked Uwagba about her time at Oxford, she described it as generally uneventful, although she suggested that her private-school background may have cushioned her from experiencing the full alienation that students sometimes undergo in the city. For her, the economic imbalance between herself and her peers only became obvious after graduation. ‘I think for me, things really started to become clear after uni, when some people’s parents buy them flats as soon as they graduate, and stuff like that. And I’m like, ‘Wow, that is not my position at all.’ And that really became more and more clear as our 20s progressed.’
And it is to her 20s that Uwagba dedicates most of the book’s chapters. There is her time post-graduation, her ascension to the advertising department at media’s favourite wild child VICE, and her ultimate decision to move back in with her parents and start her writing career. When Uwagba and I started our call, she asked if I had been able to find any internship opportunities for the summer and whether I wanted to be a journalist myself. As I explained to her that I felt sceptical about the stability of the industry and offput by some of my peers’ comments about my desire for financial stability, it was clear that I had hit a nerve.
‘There’s an element of, you should do it for the love of it. You should create art, or design, or take photos for the love of it, which does drive a lot of people in those industries. I certainly do write because I enjoy doing it, I love doing it. And that’s the same with a lot of other creative workers. But then that’s almost supposed to partially compensate you. And it’s like, well, my bank doesn’t accept my love as legal tender,’ she says, with clear frustration.
This is a problem that is perhaps unique to the creative industry: lawyers and bankers are rarely expected to work for the love of it, but if you are a creative, the job comes with that as an unspoken rule. It is a rule that keeps pay low and working hours high. As Uwagba pointed out, ‘These jobs are really highly sought after, are a bit more glamorous, a bit more prestigious, a lot of people will do them. […] The economics of supply and demand means that that pushes wages down.’ Some of these problems are beginning to be reckoned with. In the time since our call, the New Yorker Union, who have been campaigning for almost 3 years, finally reached an agreement with parent company Condé Nast. Wages and benefits at the publication will increase, and N.D.A.s will be banned in cases of workplace discrimination or harassment. It still feels like too little too late.
It is clear from reading her book that Uwagba is all too familiar with the contradictions that underpin the modern creative industry. Her chapter on Girlboss feminism, a now widely despised mindset that found some level of popularity in the early to mid-2010s, is a place where she really leans into these complexities: ‘For me, and I imagine for many other women, that challenge is further complicated by my desire to thrive under the prevailing economic system even as I recognise its many flaws, and my understanding that doing so requires me to have a certain amount of capital’. Girlboss feminism has now been so widely deconstructed it has reached a level of memeification, but Uwagba is unashamed of exploring how it may have helped her break out of a male-dominated company in favour of stepping out on her own.
Given the book’s chronological structure, it seems only natural that our conversation should end on Uwagba’s recent success in buying a flat in London. Renting in the city is an experience that Uwagba describes both to me, and in the book, as nothing short of horrific. ‘I was just like, ‘Oh my god, I’m staring down the barrel of a gun of renting for the rest of my life.’ Even now, having successfully bought her home, she feels disillusioned with the problems in the UK’s current buying process. ‘Going through the whole process showed me how messed up it all is, and how difficult it is, especially if you’re freelance, and how many hoops you have to jump through.’
It’s a buying system that Uwagba describes as assuming certain things of those that try to enter it: that you have a ‘traditional’ job, that you are buying with a partner, that you are earning a significant amount even if you’ve been able to make rent that is the same as the mortgage that you’re applying for. ‘It made me even more angry about how fucked up the system is. Because I’m like, everybody should be able to have this. And you shouldn’t have to make a lot of money to be able to do it. And the reality is, I had made much more than the average salary in the year or two leading up to it. […] It’s impossible to do on an average salary in London, you have to be earning well above average, you would ideally be buying with a partner.’
So, what are the solutions to all of this? On a personal level, Uwagba feels that the partial solution to her own financial anxiety was, somewhat unsurprisingly, having more money: ‘I’d say my relationship with money only started to improve in the very tail end of my 20s, which coincidentally, was when I started to make more money, and also started to feel like, okay, I am on a career track where I can actually probably make a decent amount.’
But on a broader social level, I wondered whether the book’s title suggests that talking about money might be a solution in itself. Uwagba corrects me here: ‘I don’t want to say that just talking about money on a really micro level is going to solve all of your problems, because I think that is the message that a lot of people in the finance space are pushing”, she points out. ‘When I say we need to talk about money, I mean it on a much bigger socio-political scale. We need to talk about who has money, how they got it, why they got it, who doesn’t, how that came to be and how all of those differences affect our individual experiences of the world, so that we can start thinking about what needs to be done about how money is made, and spent, and shared, because fundamentally it’s very unfair.’
We Need To Talk About Money is available to preorder here now.
As the rest of Europe hold their nerves in for the start of the Euros knockout stages this Saturday, Oxford are looking for revenge after two long-awaited years in the Varsity matches against Cambridge, with 2020’s matches being cancelled due to Covid-19. Cambridge will be coming to Oxford, playing at Court Place Farm, the home of Oxford City Football Club. For the first time ever, both the men and women’s team will be playing under one logo, and will head into the Varsity matches being governed by a single president, Alessandra David, with this change to the club’s structure having been made in 2020. Team members from both squads will also be awarded with a Full Blue. Although 2019 saw the men’s Blues lose on penalties and the women’s team lose 3-1, Ben Putland, the captain of the men’s Blues, emphasised the need for focus ahead of Varsity: “It doesn’t matter what has happened previously; if you win the Varsity you know it’s been a good season. Everything we have done has been in preparation and there’s a buzz of excitement around the squad which is exactly what you want going into a game like this. It’s now about remaining calm and focussed but we are confident we can bring the C.B. Fry trophy home to Oxford and join the storied list of past varsity winners.”
While the season has been disrupted due to multiple lockdowns and exams, the women’s Blues have busied themselves with various fixtures, beating Oxford United U21 (3-1), Long Crendon FC (1-0), and Oxford Brookes (5-2). The women’s team then went on to beat Brookes once again in the annual Brookes Varsity match, with a 3-0 win. The men’s team have also had various successful results, winning against Marston Saints (12-0), Oxford City U18s (4-1), and Oxford City U23s (5-2). Jake Duxbury, who will be playing in his first ever Varsity match against Cambridge, elaborated on just how difficult it has been to prepare for a summer Varsity fixture: “Perhaps the toughest thing to overcome has been the heat! The intensity with which we train and play has meant that recovery times have been longer and injuries more frequent than normal. That being said, we’ve had a great term and everyone in the squad is coming into the match feeling sharp and refreshed.”
Both the men’s and women’s teams boast multiple individual accolades within their squads. Playing for the men’s Blues will be the recent Norwich City Academy graduate, Alfie Cicale, and a former Welsh Premier Division player and two-time USASA National Cup champion, Alexander Rickett. Playing in the women’s team, on the other hand, will be a Portugues Women’s U21 national team player and a player for the 2019 Academic All-American first team.
While players from both Blues teams surely follow a lot of football in their spare time, Madeleine Kowalenko, who will also be playing in her first ever Varsity for the Dark Blues, said that her sports role model is the tennis player Ash Barty. She added: “I love her wholistic approach to sport and the way she is so mentally strong. I think she is really consistent as a player but also brings some flare- I hope I can emulate that kind of play as a midfielder in football.” Jake Duxbury, on the other hand, talked about some of his stranger pre-match rituals: “I always carry around some ‘lucky’ pebbles in my kit bag that my girlfriend gave to me on holiday. I don’t necessarily get them out or look at them each game, but I know that they’re in there somewhere! I’m also very particular about the order in which I put on my kit – shorts, left sock, right sock, shirt at the very last moment before going out.”
This year’s Varsity will be the first match played since the passing of OUAFC former “coach and friend of 20 years”, Mickey Lewis. Mickey Lewis coached the Oxford Dark Blues and Oxford United and Oxford City’s youth teams, while also leading the Velocity Football Programme. OUAFC stated that other than being “well-known for his brilliant coaching”, Mickey was better known for his “kind, generous, and funny character that made spending time with him the highlight of our week”. He was also “quite the specialist” when it came to playing Cambridge, only losing 3 Varsity matches inside 90 minutes. His legacy will be honoured with a minute’s applause before kick off, and a Blues blazer will be presented to his wife and to his son, who will also be joining the Blues as a mascot together with his Stonesfield Strikers U9s team. OUAFC recently played a memorial game against Stonesfield Strikers U9s team, conceding in the last minute of extra time to lose 13-12. There will also be a fixed tribute to Mickey placed at Iffley Road Sports Centre. The club internally raised £15,000 for the Mickey Lewis Memorial Fund as part of a wider fundraising effort with local clubs Oxford City, Oxford UTD and Stonesfield.
Should the men’s Blues win, it will be their 54th Varsity win over Cambridge’s 50 Varsity wins. If the women’s Blues win, they will close the gap to Cambridge’s 20 wins with a 13th win of their own. The squads for this year’s Varsity matches are:
Oxford University’s Student Union has launched its ‘It’s not enough’ campaign, which aims to raise awareness about the longstanding silence on race equality and make the University and its colleges aware that what they have done for racial equality so far is not enough.
Following Oriel College’s decision not to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes due to the “considerable obstacles to removal”, the campaign was launched on May 25, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.
In light of Oriel’s decision, the SU released a statement which read: “We are disappointed to hear that Oriel’s Governing Body will not be removing the Rhodes statue due to the regulatory and financial challenges involved in the process. Dismantling systemic racism in Oxford is one of the greatest challenges this university community has faced, but we believe this is no excuse for inaction.”
As part of the campaign, the SU is collecting responses to amplify student voices at Oxford. A form, which can be found on the SU website, asks students: “Why is what Oxford University has done so far on racial equality not enough?” The answers will be published as part of the campaign but students can remain anonymous if they wish.
The campaign will also involve the release of infographics on the state of racial equality at Oxford, the sharing of student written articles on race, spotlighting student-led societies working for racial equality and the publishing of student quotes.
Nikita Ma, President of Oxford SU, said: “There are many things Oxford can do better in terms of racial equality, not least removing the Rhodes statue which symbolises colonialism and racism. I am immensely grateful to all the students who have contributed their time and emotional energy to lead and support this campaign. We at Oxford SU will continue championing the student voice, and I strongly encourage you to spend less than a minute to fill out the form and make Oxford a more equal place for future generations of students to come.”
The SU page also shows statistics relating to racial equality. These include the fact that 1/16 Pro Vice Chancellors at the University are BAME and details of the attainment gaps for BAME, Asian and black students.
The foreword on the campaign’s page, written by Nikita Jain, Oriel JCR’s Ethnic Minorities Representative, reads: “As Oxford students, we can use our voice to let the University know that their current efforts are not enough. It is not enough to make empty promise after empty promise with no intention to deliver concrete change. It is not enough to ignore the testimonies of countless students who are made to feel like they don’t belong here. And it is most definitely not enough to retain a visual symbol of racism in the form of a statue of the white supremacist Cecil Rhodes on the front of Oriel College whilst maintaining a stance of anti-racism.”
“The University has committed to reforms time and time again in order to improve the experiences of students whilst they are here, and these commitments are a step in the right direction. However, at the moment, all we have seen is words and not actions. The only way we can enact real change is by holding the University to account and by pushing them to do better, because right now, it’s not enough.”
A spokesperson for the SU told Cherwell that the campaign hopes to highlight “the current problems of the University, as shown by some of the articles in the Student Voice section as well as the student submissions”.
They added: “Another important component we wanted to include is a section that aims to uplift and empower students of colour by sharing their work and also celebrating the diverse cultures that make up our student body, to make their voices and their cultures more visible.”
