In Defence of Caring Too Much
The muffled din of a crowded college bar on a Saturday night. Liquid courage invites new-found proximity to strangers, conversations struck like matches with people you don’t typically see in the sobering light of day. At the forefront of the scene is a mouth agape, eyebrows and nostrils carving t
Icon of the Week: The Jericho Tavern
Dan Spencer is the general manager of the Jericho Tavern, the pub and music venue that spawned some of the 1990s’ most iconic musical acts. I was sixteen when I first visited Oxford, and despite the protestations of my parents, I was wholly uninterested in the University and the city
Rethinking Sustainability: How Do Working-Class Creatives Sustain Themselves in a Cost-of-Living Crisis?
One cold October evening at the University of Oxford, girls dressed head to toe in Burberry flocked to listen to former British Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman, discuss all things fashion. Given the recurrent questions about sustainability, I would assume that many of these garments were Depop purch
Icon of the Week: Daniel Lloyd BCyA, Founder of Markers for Mindfulness
“I know what it’s like not having enough paper to colour things in and bring drawings home for my mum to put on the fridge.” This is one of the first things Daniel shares with me. We’re sitting in his room, the window slightly ajar. He’s sipping a hot chocolate while I drain the coffee [&h
Who’s Afraid of Music?
“Against music – for architecture”, proclaimed Salvador Dalí in his 1942 autobiography, a statement that received frustratingly little elaboration from the surrealist. Dalí was an outspoken and often self-contradictory man, for whom shock was often the desired response to his statements. How
The Athletic Artistry of Wrestling
Philosopher and essayist Roland Barthes likened it to the theatre of antiquity and the plays of Racine and Molière. Record producer Rick Rubin called it “storytelling taken to the next level”. To someone with little or limited knowledge of it, it might at first appear odd to hear poeti
In Conversation With: Bob Boilen, Founder of Tiny Desk Concerts
“It is very difficult indeed to go anywhere in the world … where people haven’t heard about and watched Tiny Desk Concerts. This is the very definition of a global phenomenon”, read a note to staff from NPR earlier this year. The series of musical performances behind an NPR office des
Icons of the Week: Katie Stamp and Jakub Trybull, Creators of A Bear’s Favour
A Bear’s Favour (niedźwiedzia przysługa) is a work-in-progress documentary made by six students from the University of Oxford, who sought to unpick the political climate in Poland. Since the fall of Communism in 1989, post-communist prosperity and living conditions drastically improved. In 2018,
In conversation with: Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
“I write the thing I think is best, not the thing I think will please the most people.” When my friend gifted me a copy of Maggie Nelson’s bestseller The Argonauts for my birthday, I mentally placed it onto my ‘to read’ pile. It was a hot summer’s day, and frankly, I wasn’t quit