Saturday 2nd May 2026
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Review: Catullus: Shibari Carmina by Isobel Williams

Grace Bartlett
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Review: Catullus: Shibari Carmina by Isobel Williams

The poetry of the late Roman Republic does not immediately move the mind to think of shibari – a Japanese rope bondage art – and yet Isobel Williams manages to blend the two in a singular fashion with her vibrant new translation of Catullus.

The first thing you notice about reading Catullus’s poetry is that he tends to surprise you. His poems range from the curiously endearing ‘da mi basia mille’ to the notoriety of poem 16, which was sufficiently scandalous as to be frequently censored in translation until the late twentieth century. He’s a poet of immense range and versatility, a man in love, a man scorned, and a man constantly at sea in the uncertainties of Roman public life. It’s hard not to like him, and it’s even harder to translate him properly.

Williams’ translation alone is fascinating, ranging from desperate sadness with the Catullus who ‘can’t go on but does/Can’t be borne, but must be’, to the outright pettiness of Poem 42. The solemnity with which she has rendered Catullus 101 is particularly touching. Often Williams strays daringly far away from the original Latin and yet almost always strikes the perfect balance. Her art is simple, bold and evocative, and serves to draw out the frank sexuality of many of Catullus’ poems.  

On the one hand, shibari allows for an excellent demonstration of some of Catullus’ main talking points – he’s a man, and a talented one at that, but he’s hopelessly in love with a high-status married woman (who might just like her brother better anyway…) and trying to prove himself in a world that doesn’t always take him seriously (note poem 16 again to see what he thought of that). It’s a world of shifting power balances, perpetual give and take, which is perhaps why Williams selected shibari as a ‘context’ for exploring the same power dynamic shifts and subversion of traditional social norms. However, while Catullus might be a highly skilled poet with points of reference that people can empathise with across the world, he’s still a Roman. It feels a bit odd that an art form sometimes accused of misappropriation and exoticisation is being utilised to furnish Catullus’ words, especially in this context and when personal connections vary.

Her translations offer an excellent introduction to the Latin poets of the real world, although some of her more modern influences may need further examination.

Think Pink

Marnie Ashbridge
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Think Pink

I could sit here and leave you in awe with cancer statistics and scare you half out of your mind with story upon story that would break your heart. Instead, I want to share with you stories about the incredible people I have met while working with Oxford Pink Week, who have taught me that the conversations that we shy away from are the ones most worth having. 

Oxford Pink Week aims to raise awareness for breast cancer, and this year we are raising money for five incredible causes: Breast Cancer Now, Coppafeel, Walk the Walk, Sakoon Through Cancer and The Leanne Pero Foundation. This project came about in 2007 as a result of Guardian journalist Dina Rabinovitch’s mission to raise money for cancer research without the need to run a marathon. Her philosophy asks fundraisers to think outside the box when raising money for a cause — and now, more than ever before, adaptation and change have been necessary. Ordinarily, each year we arrange a Pink Ball sometime in February, which is where most of our proceeds come from. However, this year we made the tricky decision to move Pink Week to the middle of May and embrace it as a few weeks of awareness rather than one single night.

Cancer is associated with great sadness, which can put a lot of people off from speaking about it. Nevertheless, organisations such as Coppafeel and Walk the Walk find light in something that is so often shrouded in darkness. With their quirky memes and colourful marketing strategy, Coppafeel are not saying that cancer is something to joke about. Instead, they know that this is the best way to get information out there to save people’s lives — which definitely is something to smile about. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview founder of Walk the Walk Nina Barough for the Pink Week podcast. Built on Nina’s dream to walk the London Marathon in a pink bra for breast cancer, Walk the Walk’s ‘moonwalks’ are now hosted across the world each year and have raised a whopping £131 million in total. We spoke about her organisation’s advocacy for a holistic approach to cancer, epitomised in their encouragement of individuals to get out walking and to live a healthy lifestyle. Her organisation has been involved in a recent social media campaign #onecancervoice, which is the collaboration of 46 cancer charities demanding the government to put cancer patients at the centre of pandemic recovery plans. According to an analysis by the Epic Health Research Network, screenings for breast cancer have dropped by 94% from January to April this year. In an article in The Lancet they stated that the “substantial increases in the number of avoidable cancer deaths in England are to be expected as a result of diagnostic delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.”

This is why I am writing today: to tell people that now more than ever it is essential that you check yourselves and tell your friends and family members too — and I’m not just talking to women here. Breast cancer is something that affects people of all genders and backgrounds. In another episode of the Pink Week podcast, I spoke with Giles Cooper, one of the 370-400 men in the UK each year to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Whilst this figure is significantly lower than in women, the percentage of those diagnosed who pass away is 20%, whereas in women it is 2.6%. When trying to raise awareness, Giles felt a strong backlash, and knows first-hand how challenging it is to face breast cancer as a man without the support of other men. Thankfully, progress is being made and he described to me the sensation of walking into a room for a men with breast cancer support group and no longer feeling alone.

The two trustees of Sakoon Through Cancer, Iyna Butt and Samina Hussain, further attest to the importance of community in cancer networks, having created their organisation to aid other South Asian women like themselves who are affected by the taboo of cancer. Samina met Iyna in a waiting room and was struck by the sight of a young mother going through cancer all alone, so she wrote down her number, telling her to call if she ever needed advice or a chat. As a person who understood her struggle, Samima’s support network helped Iyna through her journey.

The imagery associated with breast cancer often suggests that it affects only white cis women, but many of the charities being supported by Oxford Pink Week aim to dismantle this deadly misconception. Leanne Pero’s Foundation aims to empower BME people going through breast cancer in their ‘Black Women Rising’ campaign, which provides support groups and spreads information through their podcast and magazine. Leanne Pero, who set up this organisation, realised that the NHS lacked cancer support packages for BME cancer patients and felt that her community was being excluded from the UK’s mainstream media outlets and cancer charity campaigns. Misdiagnosis and a lack of mental health support have left many in the BME community to feel excluded and unhelpful myths and taboos surrounding cancer for some individuals in the BME community may have prevented them from speaking out about their ordeals. This has led to many members of the BME community lacking awareness about breast cancer, resulting in late-stage diagnoses and higher mortality rates than in their white counterparts. Connecting with one another and sharing experiences is an essential part of Leanne Pero’s objective. 

Our key mission at Oxford Pink Week is to get people talking about breast cancer. It is often that when something makes us feel uncomfortable, like cancer, we want to look away. Our stiff upper lip kicks in and we find it best not to talk about it. When I tell people that we are raising awareness for Breast Cancer they are often confused. They tell me that pretty much everyone is already aware of what breast cancer is, it is the most common cancer to affect women, after all. However, this is not the point. People still need to check themselves each month and we need to start normalising conversations about cancer. I know it can be very upsetting, but we need to talk about it more and more. This way, those voices that often go unheard can finally be heard. Talking about it can save lives. So, what are we waiting for?

Join us on the fortnight of 3rd and 4th Week of Trinity (10th – 24th of May) for a multitude of different events and activities ranging from a 10K walk, a debate night with Femsoc and a picnic in the park, to a boys versus girls lacrosse match, karaoke night at the Oxford Union and Pink Night Finale on the 23rd of May at Freud with live music and cocktails. We are also selling a variety of merchandise: t-shirts, earrings and facemasks. You can go to our website (https://oxpinkweek.wixsite.com/) to shop and to find out more about our Pink Week podcast mini-series. Follow us on Instagram or Facebook where our term card will be released.

Image used with permission from Oxford Pink Week

When breath becomes scarce: why Oxford must engage with India’s COVID crisis now

Damayanti Chatterjee
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When breath becomes scarce: why Oxford must engage with India’s COVID crisis now

Fear is not nearly so disarming as helplessness. And this pandemic has introduced new ways to understand fear. Last March, there was a fear of the unknown, of stepping into restrictions on daily life that had not been encountered in living memory in Britain. Oxford was left echoing out into its own silence with the sound of footsteps untrodden, a deserted river uncut by the wakes of punts, and an Exam Schools, grim-faced and empty, towering over a traffic-less High Street and the ghosts of carnations, shaving foam, and mortarboards.

Our previous fears have somewhat dissolved into new ones; the anxious fear that we have forgotten how to speak to each other; the silent fear that life as ‘normal’ is perhaps gone forever and at best we will get back a distant relation of it; maybe even the more hopeful fear as we watch the snaking queues walk through the vaccination clinic, praying that the net of safety this casts will fall around all those that we care about in time. We faced these fears; faced them with shaky, disbelieving laughs and parting calls of ‘stay safe’ last year, and we face them this year with hundreds of thousands of volunteers donning PPE, picking up syringes of vaccine and welcome leaflets.

It seems, however, this pandemic has unturned corners down the road yet. 14 months into my COVID journal, a new crisis has the world in its tightest grip yet. Since the start of April, a fast-spreading new variant has meant that India has posted a new global world record for the number of coronavirus cases every single day. This gruesome triumph has in the last two weeks come to a peak even by its own standards, topping out at around 400,000 officially recorded cases a day.

India’s purported silver COVID bullet of a remarkably low death rate is flagging in the face of a daily death count in the thousands…if we take the official records. If we take the reports from exhausted health workers, the journalists wading into the hellfire, and the crematorium workers who break up the battles the living have so their dead can pass peacefully, the death toll is likely several times higher each day. Perhaps the equivalent of the University of Oxford’s population is dying in India every week. We will not know until the dust has settled, and perhaps not even then. For the thousands of migrant and daily-life workers who die due to a lack of oxygen, if they are not seen by the journalist at the door of the crematorium, there may be no one left to mark their death.

The time is both past and not yet come to explicate whether these are the effects of years of chronic under-investment in healthcare, the re-election of a nationalist party or simply the contingent complacency borne of early victories. In 2019, the idea of a singular event being able to rock the entire world, to enter into even those crevices of humanity that have resisted politics and wider society the longest and the hardest, was unthinkable. The first four months of the new year was an immersive masterclass in exactly how that could happen. You could look people in the eyes and see there was only one conversation, one word on their lips. And yet, watching doomsday itself unfold in India as a South Asian person in Britain has felt more different than this still; a more personal global crisis. All of a sudden you are plugged into the diaspora, not only by fear but by desperate helplessness.

It is difficult to prescribe a rank to the set of reasons for which the University and its students should take action against the crisis in India. But perhaps the most obvious reason is this one. India’s Prime Minister has talked of the ‘living bridge’ that exists between the UK and India – a description a string of Conservative Prime Ministers have hastened to match in clunky urgency. The political expediency in such descriptions is clear, and the dancing around colonial history that accompanies these speeches is awkward at best.

However, in May 2021 it is unavoidably evident that any cultural ties that may have begun with an empire are sustained today by an individual, personal link, magnified a million times. Entire generations of South Asians have settled in Britain, and their children have diffused through every level of society. To be greeted with a picture of Rishi Sunak’s beaming face plastered over every option on the Wetherspoons app last summer is perhaps the most cringe-inducing proof in this microwaved pudding.

A crisis in India will, now and henceforth always, wash up a wave of pain on Britain’s shores. The pandemic has thrown a new urgency in the duties of care a University owes to its students and staff, and at this moment, most of its members are about two degrees of separation away from a relative or friend in immediate danger. Scouts, porters, tutors, students of Indian heritage wait on tenterhooks and Indian students face a Trinity term of exams and significant deadlines whilst waking up every day to a country and a home on fire. This crisis is also Oxford’s crisis, and Oxford has the resources to help.

Moreover, the Serum Institute of India is an enormous player in the battlefield to end this pandemic and wrest our lives back. It has been producing vaccines since January for international use and the Global South as well as for domestic use. Five million of Britain’s planned doses originate from the SII at a time where North American countries and Western European countries have been imposing restrictions and outright bans on vaccine and component exports. 30 million doses have been provided by the SII to Covax, the WHO-based international program to distribute to vaccines to low and middle-income countries. This in addition to the bilateral transfers of tens of millions of doses to neighbouring countries at little or no cost. The SII is integral to accelerating the global rollout of vaccines that will end this nightmare, and whilst its resources are otherwise diverted, the variants (like the one that brought the NHS to its knees in January) are a real and ever-present danger – we’ve now learned that complacency towards the things that matter will come back to bite.

There are clear, present, pressing needs emanating from India now: oxygen, hospital resources, medical consultations. And there are clear, present, pressing ways that the country and the University of Oxford can provide them. The resources required exist, as does the human capital necessary, in this country and that one, to re-innovate and direct them to where they are needed. Now what is needed is the financial resources to facilitate this. The Oxford India Society, HUMSoc, and the Oxford South Asian Society in collaboration with their Cambridge equivalents have in the last week set up a fundraiser with a chain of expert evaluation behind it directing financial resources to exactly where need and impact is greatest. The fundraiser has blown well past its initial targets, but more is needed. The University of Oxford, its colleges, and its common rooms and supremely well-placed to contribute the kind of finances that will make tangible difference. Students within that can exert the pressure to make this happen.

Whatever else we describe of our university experience in later life, we already know this story is one that will be told. In decades to come, we will be asked about the months and years following March 2020 – where we were, how we coped and, more than anything, what we did. How we helped. In the coming weeks, standing up and being counted in this newest crisis will come at very little effort to us, but is capable of making the enormous differences we need to make this a story to tell rather than the life we are living.

Submit a motion to your common room to transfer funds to the Oxford India Society to directly support the crisis.

Call on your head of college to support the fundraiser from college funds, and address the welfare needs of Indian students.

You can donate to the fundraiser here.

Image Credit: Gwydion M. Williams. Licence: CC BY 2.0.

Government funds Oxford-researched Early Language Programme in 6,500 primary schools

Angela Eichhorst
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Government funds Oxford-researched Early Language Programme in 6,500 primary schools

The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) secured £8 million in government funding last week to roll out their programme to over a third of UK primary schools free of charge this upcoming academic year. 

The 20-week-long intervention course gives four-to-five-year-olds with the weakest language skills two 15-minute individual sessions and three 30-minute small group sessions a week. The focus is on developing their narrative and listening skills. 

The course is the first of its kind to go through randomised trials, which involved 1,156 pupils in 193 schools. An independent evaluation process found that participating students made three additional months language skills progress than the non-NELI control group. Furthermore, NELI was awarded the highest out of five EEF padlock levels, showing that gains made will be maintained in the months and years to come. 

The cost of NELI is £43 per child, which covers learning materials and training sessions for the teaching assistants who administer the course. NELI is expected to close the learning gap for disadvantaged children, who can struggle to grasp material further on in the curriculum if they don’t have a solid foundation in language. In trial schools, 34% of children who qualified for NELI were also eligible for free school meals. 

According to the National Literacy Trust, 16.4% of UK adults (7.1 million people) are functionally illiterate, which has been strongly linked to reduced economic, physical and personal wellbeing. Problems start early, with one in five 11-year-olds unable to read well.

This £8 million in government support is granted as part of the £350 million allocated to tutoring through the £1 billion Covid-19 “catch-up” package for schools announced in June 2020. 

In a survey carried out in the Autumn Term of 2020, 96% of schools reported being ‘very concerned’ or ‘quite concerned’ about the development of their pupils’ language and communication skills due to the pandemic. Now more than ever, early language interventions will be crucial for children’s lifelong success. 

The programme was developed by a team led by Professor Snowling, Dr Bowyer-Crane and Professor Hulme, who are associated with the Nuffield Foundation, an Oxford based fund for social well-being issues. 

Professor Snowling has been approached for comment.

Image: Ben Wicks via unsplash.com

In-Person Fundraiser held by Oxford Students for COVID Relief in India

Matthew Schaffel
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In-Person Fundraiser held by Oxford Students for COVID Relief in India

Last Sunday afternoon, Indian students gathered at Bonn Square to raise funds for the Oxbridge Student Action for COVID Relief in India. After three hours the fundraiser raised £580 in cash donations and £1000 through online donations.

Oxford South Asian Society Events Officer Gayathree Devi KT and Treasurer Sameer Rashid Bhat led the fundraiser. They were also joined by Oxford India Society President Anvee Bhutani and Treasurer Sushrut Royyuru, and a number of members from all three of the societies, who had organised the event.

This follows the joint online fundraiser, set up by the Oxford India Society, the Oxford University South Asian Society, and the Oxford University Hindu Society, which reached its initial target of £10,000 last week. Subsequent to this a joint fundraiser with the Cambridge South Asia Forum, the Cambridge University India Society, and the Cambridge University Bharatiya Society was set up with the aim of raising £50,000.

Devi KT, a DPhil student at University of Oxford, said regarding the event: “We are very grateful to the Oxford community for standing by us at this very difficult time. We will continue our in-person fundraising efforts over the next few days and hope that the Oxford community will continue lending their support to us by donating generously and by spreading the word in their networks.”

Shrinidhi Narasimhan, an MPhil student at the University of Oxford added: “It was heartwarming to see so much solidarity and support for what is happening back home. The coverage that India’s COVID crisis has gotten in global and Western media outlets has really helped because most people seemed to be aware of how bad things are in the country. For those of us living away from home, coming together to organise the online funding campaign and do street canvassing has been a really meaningful way of channeling our anxiety, anger, and frustration with how crippled the public healthcare system has become in India.”

Piyali Chatterjee, an MSc student at the University of Oxford, who was also present at Bonn Square commented: “I was feeling helpless and desolate listening to the news coming back from home in India. The support we received from people in terms of raising funds, awareness as well as empathy for my home country was overwhelming and proved yet again how humanity binds people across the globe. We hope to use the funds in the best possible way to support COVID relief efforts at the grassroots level in India.”

Image Credit (top and in-line): Anvee Bhutani

OxMatch criticised for ‘homophobic’ question

Matthew Schaffel
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OxMatch criticised for ‘homophobic’ question

OxMatch has received criticism for a ‘homophobic’ question used in its matchmaking form. The form asked users to rate on a scale of one to five the question “I would be ok if my children were gay”. This has led to condemnation of the service by some students and student groups.

Alison Hall, a student at the University, told Cherwell: “The question OxMatch included on their survey completely trivialises the threat of familial rejection faced by many LGBTQ+ individuals, not to mention the fact that it is completely out of place and inappropriate for an informal personality quiz as a component for an online dating service. OxMatch’s response was also  deeply insulting, as it came across as an affirmation that their supposed expertise on collecting data trumps people’s lived experience of homophobia and disappointment at the inclusion of such a question.”

Oxford University LGBTQ society told Cherwell: “We have recently been made aware of the inclusion of an inappropriate and upsetting question in the latest OxMatch Questionnaire. We have made contact with the creators of OxMatch urging them to remove this question, and in the meantime wish to extend our welfare support to those who have been adversely impacted by this issue. 

 “The OULGBTQ+ Society Welfare Officers, Fran (she/her) at [email protected] or Lewis (they/them) at [email protected], are both Peer Support trained and available to listen. There is also a Welfare Brunch tomorrow morning at the Jolly Farmers, 10am-12pm, where in person support will be available (and also in the form of baked goods!) 

“Alternatively, if you feel more comfortable you can contact the Switchboard LGBTQ+ helpline here https://switchboard.lgbt/ for confidential support from trained LGBTQ+ volunteers between 10am-10pm.”

In the past, OxMatch has also faced backlash for violating GDPR rules alongside their own privacy policy. Students recieved promotional emails from the service, including advertising from services such as MyTutor, which they had not signed up to. 

Regarding the criticism, a spokesperson for OxMatch said to Cherwell: “The specific question was put in due to previous complaints about individuals matching with those holding homophobic views. The question was designed to filter out homophobic individuals. We have not received a single complaint about this question despite thousands of students doing the survey. The same question was used in other non-affiliated surveys that ran in Oxford and elsewhere before without complaints.”

“We have always sought to make OxMatch as inclusive as possible and welcome any suggestions about how to do that.”

Image Credit: Jill Cushen

 

Protesters act as ‘human bollards’ on Oriel Square

Matthew Schaffel
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Protesters act as ‘human bollards’ on Oriel Square

The Oxford Pedestrians Association (OXPA) has recently carried out a protest on Oxford’s Oriel Square to highlight the lack of operational bollards in the area. Regular traffic is usually prohibited from driving through the square between 07:30 and 18:30 BST.

Three campaigners stood on the square for an hour, acting as ‘human bollards’, preventing oncoming traffic from coming through. About 70 vehicles tried to pass through illegally during this time. The protesters said that they were abused, threatened and driven at by some of the drivers.

A spokesperson for OXPA told the BBC that the bollards and traffic cameras “have been broken for around four years, and cars have become accustomed to driving through, knowing they will not be stopped or fined”.

A statement on their Facebook page also said that they were “immediately confronted by drivers from all sides, who revved towards us and demanded we move so they could break the law.”

“When we refused, they first tried to argue ‘legitimate’ reasons (e.g. “I’m picking up my child”, “I need to go to the pharmacist”), and when that didn’t work they became livid.

“Many argued that they had urgent reasons to pass, but then decided to sit in their cars threatening us for the entire hour-duration of the protest rather than find an alternative route.”

The protesters noted on the post that drivers “blared their horns for minutes on end, swore at us” and that one drove at a protester “forcing her out of the way so that he could pass”. 

In a comment to Cherwell, an Oxford County Council spokesperson said: “New rising bollards have been installed together with ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) and CCTV cameras at each of the five sites in Oxford (Turl, Oriel, Cornmarket, Broad Street and Aristotle Lane). The council needs the ANPR camera to work so that vehicles with a right of access, emergency vehicles and residents, can get through the bollards without delay.  The CCTV cameras are required to ensure that, when we need to remotely raise and lower the bollards, we can do so safely and not cause a safety issue to other road users.”

“The systems need a robust broadband system to work coherently together. The council has been testing the available internet bandwidth to ensure that we are addressing the correct issue. If new broadband connections are required, we will order this immediately after testing is complete. At the same time, motorists must obey all signs and refrain from driving into prohibited areas at specified times. Failure to do so could result in enforcement by the police.”

Image Credit: sailko / CC BY-SA 3.0 

‘Perfect antidote’ against perfectionism: New Round of Social Enterprise Awards launched at Oxford Hub

Yan Chen
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‘Perfect antidote’ against perfectionism: New Round of Social Enterprise Awards launched at Oxford Hub

Oxford Hub, a local social action charity, is actively seeking applications for the newest round of its biannual Social Enterprise Awards. All Oxford University students and staff are eligible to submit ideas for a social enterprise benefiting Oxfordshire, with winners receiving up to £1,000 for their proposed project. Additional support includes office space, networking and community, publicity, and Amazon Web Service credits.

The Social Enterprise Awards, co-run with the University’s Research Services, have supported over 40 social impact projects since 2013, with a stated goal of supporting individuals and teams to “take action and make the world a better place” through building businesses with a social purpose.

Applicants can choose to apply to one of two Award categories depending on which stage their enterprising idea is in. The Try It Award, which awards up to £500, enables applicants to test out ideas, even fledgling ones, on a small scale. The Do it Award, which provides funding of up to £1,000, supports the expansion of projects that have already been tested and proven viable, with an eye to the ventures’ future financial sustainability. Applicants for the latter Award are advised to provide accompanying evidence such as financials, a business plan, and evidence of partnerships or a customer base.

“The Social Enterprise Awards reward creativity and risk-taking”, responds Eliza Harry, Placements Officer at Oxford Hub, when asked about what makes the Awards unique. Harry, identifying risk-averse tendencies arising from perfectionism as prevalent among university students, sees the Awards as an “antidote” to these tendencies that encourages students to “be bold, test out ideas, and embrace failure as an opportunity for learning.”

The Awards have funded a diverse range of initiatives that run the gamut from soap recycling to eco-friendly nappies for local families. Past awardees include the well-known Common Ground Café & Social Workspace, sustainable eating-proponent Carbon Codes, Uncomfortable Oxford, which scrutinises overlooked inequalities and injustices embedded in Oxford history through guided tours, Onyx Magazine, which celebrates Black creatives, and LegalMe, a tenancy dispute resolution platform.

Students and staff participating in the scheme have been able to “progress rapidly with their ideas and businesses” with the support and funding offered by Oxford Hub, Harry says. Social enterprise Carbon Codes, which uses price discounts to incentivise sustainable eating, was able to set up an Android app and website with the help of a Do It Award. A representative at the environmental startup also notes how Oxford Hub “provided us with connections and resources to help increase our knowledge base as well suggestions for potential partnerships”, including Oxford Hub’s own non-profit refill shop, OxUnboxed, located in its Little Clarendon Street office.

Past winners of the Social Enterprise Award have scaled up their operations since receiving support from Oxford Hub. Winning the Award allowed the Oxford Accessibility Project (OAP) to build the first online accessibility guide for all Oxford colleges and permanent private halls. The work of the OAP has since then morphed into SociAbility, an app that maps the accessibility of social venues and facilities through crowdsourcing information.

Applications for the current round of Social Enterprise Awards close on the 29th May 2021 at 12pm, with results announced within two weeks of the deadline. A panel of University and community experts will review applications, and all applicants will receive feedback, regardless of whether they win an award.

Oxford Hub has offered on its website a guidance document that breaks down the application process, as well as free advice sessions helping applicants tailor their idea to the Awards and providing application advice. Oxford Hub strongly encourages applicants to book a session by reaching out to Eliza Harry at [email protected].

The advice sessions are not the only opportunities for interested students and staff to finetune their application before the application deadline. Oxford Hub will be hosting a launch event for the Awards via Zoom on 10th May from 5-6pm BST, where prospective applicants can learn about applying to the Awards and engage in a Q&A session with a member of the judging panel.

From 21st to 23rd May, Oxford Hub is also running the Innovate for Oxford Competition, open to Oxford University staff and students. The competition, which awards £300 for the winning team to set up its idea, will include a morning workshop on techniques of fast innovation and behaviour change principles that those interested in the Social Enterprise Awards can benefit from.

Founded in 2008 by Oxford University students, Oxford Hub aims to make the city a more equal place by helping individuals thrive, building relationships, increasing community participation, and creating systemic change. It focuses on cultivating meaningful relationships between people and organisations.

Oxford Hub’s wide range of programmes support children, young people, families, migrants, older people, and vulnerable residents in Oxford’s regeneration areas. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Oxford Hub has also been coordinating Oxford Together, an ongoing community response volunteer effort.

Image Credit: Oxford Hub

Light Ahead – Ashmolean celebrates communities and faiths of Oxfordshire

Clementine Scott
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Light Ahead – Ashmolean celebrates communities and faiths of Oxfordshire

One World, a five-month virtual festival hosted by the Ashmolean and celebrating the diversity of faiths and communities in Oxfordshire, concluded on 11th April, with a series of videos streamed online entitled ‘Light Ahead’. 

This final event was introduced by Oxfordshire’s new High Sheriff Imam Monawar Hussain, speaking on the kindness he had witnessed in Oxfordshire during the COVID crisis, and more generally on the importance of celebrating different religions and cultures. This gave way to several demonstrations, performances and discussions. Topics ranged from the Muslim contribution to music, to dual heritage explored in collage form by artist Lana Al-Shami, to the importance of precious objects across the generations of a local Jewish family. 

The annual One World festival as a whole is stated on the Ashmolean website as a celebration of “the many communities and faiths in Oxfordshire”. Its particular theme this year, ‘Light in the Dark’, seeks to “bring hope as well as opportunities for reflection”. The events, taking place roughly once a month, incorporated multi-faith storytelling, music and dance performances and craft, prompting Oxfordshire Lord-Lieutenant Tim Stevenson to refer to the festival at its launch as a “creative tour de force”. Additionally, several of the events served as introductions to the festivals and holy days of various cultures, including Hanukkah, Chinese New Year, and Holi. 

One World was supported by various faith and cultural organisations within Oxford, such as the Oxford Jewish Congregation, Oxford Chinese Community and Advice Centre, and the Oxford Hindu Temple, as well as by the City Council. When approached by Cherwell for comment about the Ashmolean’s involvement with the festival, Mary Clarkson, the council’s Cabinet Member for City Centre, Covered Market and Culture, ruminated on the importance of people of all faiths and cultures feeling “welcomed and relevant” in Oxford’s museums. In addition to One World, Clarkson cited the Multaka Project, which recruits Arabic-speaking volunteers in the interpretation of Islamic objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Museum of the History of Science, as an example of museums involving diverse communities effectively in their work.

All of the videos from the One World festival are available to stream here. The Ashmolean is currently closed to the public, but is set to reopen on 17th May. For now, it continues to offer a multitude of online collections titled “Ashmolean at home”. 

Image Credit: Lewis Clarke / Wikipedia Commons / CC-SA-2.0

Cher-ity Corner: Jacari Oxford

Sophie Morris
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Cher-ity Corner: Jacari Oxford

One of the most important lessons I have learnt, as I imagine many others have too from this pandemic, is the value of offering up our time to help others. Cher-ity Corner is a weekly column that highlights local Oxford charities that students can volunteer with and make a difference.

I spoke to Freya Turner, the Lead Coordinator of Jacari to discuss how they came about, the opportunities that are on offer for students and lots about what they do. Find out how you can get involved and more about their amazing work!

What’s Jacari?

“Jacari was set up in 1956 as a student run anti-racist campaign (the Joint Action Committee Against Racial Intolerance). During the 1950s and 60s, Jacari organised many high-profile speaker events and campaigns highlighting the racial injustices of the time. For example, they arranged an extensive survey to show that a majority of Oxford landladies would not accept black students as tenants, highlighting the barriers that students of colour faced in attending the university. They also fundraised for scholarships for students from South Africa and campaigned against apartheid. Jacari’s teaching programme was born in the 1960s, and over the decades the focus has shifted from a campaigning organisation and student society to a registered charity (we first registered in 2005), focused on providing free English tuition. Jacari used to be fully run by a student committee; now we employ a paid coordinator in Oxford and an alumni and fundraising officer, who are supported by our enthusiastic student committee members.”

Jacari’s vision is a society where young people from all backgrounds have the confidence and language skills to achieve their full potential. Our mission is to improve the confidence and English language skills of young people through our free tuition scheme. We work with those who have English as an additional language and are at risk of not achieving their full potential.

“Jacari is an award-winning charity providing free one-to-one tuition to children in Oxford with English as an additional language, helping them to build confidence with learning English, and fulfil their academic potential.”

Each pupil is matched to a student volunteer – with volunteers from Oxford Brookes and Oxford University – tutoring for one hour per week, currently over video call. There are around 65 volunteer-pupil pairs at the moment and referrals of pupils are recevied from 10 schools across Oxford.

Before the pandemic, Jacari tuition was delivered in the pupils’ homes, so volunteers would travel there and get to meet the pupil’s wider family, which was part of what makes them so special! When lockdown happened in March 2020 they had to adapt very rapidly to the challenge of offering Jacari tuition via video calls.

“Our volunteers have been so fantastic at giving this a try, alongside using letter writing and phone calls to stay in touch with their pupils.”

In Autumn 2020 they were able to train a whole cohort of new volunteers on zoom and get them started with fully remote tutoring.

“A big challenge for us was that 30% of our pupils didn’t have any technology at home for accessing Jacari lessons, and these were the pupils who most needed our help as they were not able to engage in remote learning during the first lockdown.”

“We have been mobilising the local community to donate laptops and tablets over the past few months, and have now started loaning them out to families in need so that every child who needs it can have a tutor.”

How can students get involved?

“I’m constantly impressed by everyone who devotes time to their Jacari pupil on top of their busy life as an Oxford student.”

“We look for volunteers who are motivated by promoting the educational attainment, confidence and self-esteem of children and young people; are open, friendly and interested in learning about different cultures; have excellent communication and interpersonal skills; can work under their own initiative; and have a high standard of written and spoken English – if English is not your first language, you should have an IELTS score of 7.5 or above and you do not need prior teaching experience to apply.”

“We are still unsure whether teaching in September 2021 will be online or in-person. Therefore we recommend volunteers prepare to be able to volunteer from home and have a suitable laptop and strong internet connection for video calling!”

At the moment they are recruiting our next student committee for 2021-22 – to apply click here – https://www.jacari.org/join-oxford-committee

Why should you get involved?

Some feedback from parents is the best way to highlight this:

‘Jacari lessons and my son’s interactions with his tutor improved his English to a very great extent. He couldn’t talk in English in the beginning of school and now I am happy to tell you that he is getting ready to start a YouTube Channel in English”

As a volunteer it is also so rewarding to build a friendship over time with your pupil. One of the volunteers said –

‘Being a Jacari tutor is an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s great to get out of the university bubble and see more of Oxford, but more importantly it is extremely gratifying to work one-on-one with your pupil; we get to see them grow, progress, and become more confident people. Pupils are always so grateful for the help you give them, and their families make you feel so welcome. Tutoring during Covid has been very different, but it has remained fulfilling. It has been harder to do things like play games or do crafts, but everyone’s adapted really well to the new system. What hasn’t changed even in these challenging times is the pupils’ spirit – they have remained just as enthusiastic and we’re equally eager to help them learn!’

“When children feel left behind with language, they can feel marginalised and left out at school, hitting their confidence and damaging their ability to engage academically. Disadvantaged children with EAL have been disproportionately affected by the closure of schools and the disruption to education caused by covid-19 this year, meaning our work is all the more important at this moment in time. Recent research by the Bell Foundation has found that proficiency in English is strongly correlated to educational attainment at both Key stage 2 and Key stage 4 – so it’s vital that we help pupils catch up with their English as soon as possible if they are to reach their full potential.”

“Jacari lessons are designed to be fun; they help with boosting children’s overall social confidence and the student tutors provide an inspiring educational role model, helping to raise aspirations. Taking part in Jacari also helps student volunteers invest in and connect with the wider Oxford community and spend some time outside of the ‘university bubble’.”

Want to get involved?

You can follow Jacari on social media for updates on how you can get involved or you could sign up as a volunteer tutor; or if you speak another language you could help us translate our communications to parents.

To celebrate their 65th anniversary they are also running a ‘65km challenge’ – starting on May 6th, where they are asking people to run, walk, swim, cycle 65 km in 65 days and raise at least £65 for Jacari in sponsorship. To sign up and find out more, click here: https://www.jacari.org/65challenge. The person who fundraises the most money will win a cookery class with Migrateful.

For more ways to get involved:

www.jacari.org

https://www.givey.com/jacarioxford

https://www.instagram.com/jacarioxford/

Image Credit: Jacari.

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