Introduction

We first opened our doors in 1975. To mark this special fiftieth anniversary year, we have been collaborating with Oxford’s communities to weave together fifty new stories that reflect the vibrant and diverse heritage of our city.

This exhibition puts the spotlight on the community groups, volunteers, change-makers, and artists across the city that we have been working with this year. Through collaborative artworks, community-collected objects, oral histories, and personal labels, we have created a community-woven archive that represents Oxford in 2025.

The exhibition is deliberately varied and open-ended, and evolved throughout 2025 as we gathered new community stories. We hope that this reflects Oxford’s patchwork nature, celebrates each individual voice, and opens up this collaborative archive to your own memories. What is your Oxford?

For the purpose of this digital version of the exhibition, we have grouped together the fifty stories into a few different catagories to make it easier to explore. Use the navigation bar above to explore the exhibition through these five categories. Alternatively, view a full list of the 50 community stories here and dive straight in to a specific story.

You can also find out more about the wonderful community quilt we commissioned E West to create over the course of our anniversary year, and read some of the comments left by our visitors.