CONFERENCE OXFORD NEWSLETTER
DECEMBER 2006
Welcome to our Autumn- NEW MEMBER Winter Newsletter We are very pleased to announce that two Bodleian Library new members have joined Conference Oxford, the Bodleian Library and Ripon he Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University College Cuddesdon. Do read about them Tof Oxford. It is also a copyright deposit library and its collections in this newsletter. are used by scholars from around the world. One of the world’s Conference Oxford is the only one-stop great libraries, its buildings include several of Oxford’s architectural enquiry point on availability for masterpieces. The buildings within the central site available for conferences and group bookings at the functions are the Divinity School, Convocation House and the University of Oxford and the Colleges– Chancellor’s Court. now representing a total of 53 venues. The Divinity School is a beautiful medieval building, completed in As part of our service we offer: 1483, it is the oldest surviving purpose-built building for university • A free venue search amongst our 53 use, built specifically for lectures and discussions on theology. venues, college and university Charles I subsequently held his Court here during the Civil War. • A support network dedicated to This historically-unique location is available to hire for receptions of meeting the particular needs of your up to 260 people, presentations, private functions and dinners for group a maximum of 150. Guests can be offered a tour of Duke • Advice and help on planning your Humfrey’s Library. meeting or day-to-day itinerary • Information on useful external local Those of you not familiar with the Bodleian Library may know more facilities and contacts about it than you think, as it has many times been used as a location for feature films and television programmes. It has Do contact us if we can be of any help in placing your conference or event. You may ‘starred’ in all the like to join one of our Familiarization Trips, Harry Potter films held monthly to see three of our venues. and several We find that potential clients find these episodes of trips very useful as well as enjoyable. Inspector Morse; in This autumn we are continuing our work The History Boys, with Davies Tanner, a PR agency The Madness of specializing in the meetings market. We King George, have already had articles in Conference News, the Daily Telegraph, Conference & Shadowlands and Incentive Travel, the myvenues.co.uk the forthcoming website, and Meetings & Incentive Travel. film of Philip Do look out for us in the conference Pullman’s His Dark press, check the PR activity page on our Materials; it has website at www.conference-oxford.co.uk and read more about the campaign in this been the backdrop newsletter for David Starkey in I hope that you enjoy this new newsletter Monarchy and and find it interesting and helpful. Let us Melvyn Bragg in The know if we can help you in any way. South Bank Show Best wishes, and other programmes. Sally Dunsmore Conference Manager http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/
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NEW MEMBER Ripon College Cuddesdon ipon College Cuddesdon is a residential theological Rcollege, 5 miles from Oxford and with easy access to the M40. It was established to train men (and now women) for ministry within the Church of England and its former students and staff include several bishops and archbishops. Ripon College Cuddesdon’s historic buildings, set in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside, offer a relaxed and historic setting, with excellent catering facilities, good accommodation, a choice of fully-equipped seminar rooms, and a very warm welcome. The College is an extremely attractive venue for residential conferences, corporate meetings, seminars and retreats. Its buildings offer good accommodation and a choice of fully-equipped seminar rooms for groups of varying sizes. Day groups of up to 60 can be accommodated throughout the year, with full residential facilities for up to 35 available during the College vacations. http://www.rcc.ac.uk/ Keble College Very successful first BritDoc Festival
he success of the inaugural BritDoc Film Festival, held at TKeble College in July 2006, has ensured a firm booking for 2007 and possibly also in future years. The organisers’ objective is that the festival will become the essential annual meeting-place of every key player in British feature documentary production and bring together leading international film producers, distributors, financiers and British film makers. The festival achieved extensive press coverage and the feedback from those attending was very positive. Here are some of their comments: ‘Fantastic festival, brilliantly structured, in a fabulous place’; ‘I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed BritDoc . . . it was a long overdue and valuable event in a terrific setting’; ‘The intimacy, the atmosphere, the setting and the people all served to make BritDoc one of the highlights of my festival year’. www.keble.ox.ac.uk
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Christ Church Spies Lies and Intelligence at Slavery and Sugar Conference 2007 Christ Church, Oxford
OLEG GORDIEVSKY PROFESSOR SIR MICHAEL HOWARD
hrist Church has selected topical and controversial he College’s annual autumn conference in its popular Cthemes for its Spring 2007 Special Interest TConflict series attracted over 250 participants in Weekend, fourth in the College’s series. Both are linked early September. The event again enjoyed a strong to the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave following from Britain and overseas, some guests trade in the British Empire in 1807, commemorations of sampling a Christ Church Conflict event for the first time, which will take place on a national scale next year. others returning for this the sixth event in the series. The two-option Christ Church Special Interest The list of speakers included over twenty experts, Weekend has attracted a loyal following—an encouraging historians and practitioners, headed by Professor Sir number of advance bookings followed the programme’s Michael Howard, OM CH MC DLitt FBA, Honorary Student publication in October. Participants can choose one of of Christ Church, who opened the proceedings. A warmly- two themes: the History Option is entitled Empire, Sea received newcomer was Bill Duff, formerly with the Power and Abolition; the Food & Drink Option is Sweet Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, an Secrets and Strange Delights. expert speaker on the lessons learned in Northern Ireland during the years of IRA and ‘loyalist’ terrorism. Historians will learn of the appalling triangular trade The star closing speaker was Oleg Gordievsky, former across the Atlantic, the rise of the abolition movement KGB colonel and head of its London station, who had in Britain, the nineteenth-century enforcement role of worked secretly for British Intelligence for eleven years the Royal Navy and slavery’s contemporary until his exfiltration from the Soviet Union in 1985. resonances. Food & Drink participants will hear of the Though his talk was ostensibly an overview of twentieth- evolution of sugar from luxury food to cheap century Soviet intelligence activity in Britain, his most commodity, its types, varieties and by-products and its moving description was of his own escape from certain many applications in the British culinary tradition from execution. the Middle Ages. Sampling and a comparative rum At the end of the conference, John Harris, Steward of tasting are included. Christ Church and director of the college’s conference Lectures are given by Oxford tutors and other programmes, announced the 2007 conflict theme: specialist speakers and the event concludes with a Nature of War. This will be held 9–14 September 2007, Regency banquet in Christ Church Hall. Details are on led by Professor Hugh Strachan, Chichele Professor of the Christ Church website at www.chch.ox.ac.uk. Or the History of War at Oxford. Details will be on the Christ contact 01865 286848 or 286877; Church website at www.chch.ox.ac.uk shortly and a e-mail [email protected]. printed programme will again be available.
4 CONFERENCE OXFORD Trinity College New chandelier in the Dining Hall
rinity College’s Dining Hall now has a splendid new chandelier Twhich greatly increases the choice of lighting for functions. It was commissioned by a Trinity Old Member, Peter Andraea, and designed and built by Dick Reid, a craftsman working in York who has made a number of spectacular chandeliers, notably for Windsor Castle after the 1992 fire. The chandelier is of gilded and painted wood, and in an early eighteenth-century style designed to fit the architecture of the Hall’s interior. Its eight lower arms, and four upper ones, are crowned by gilt dragons’ heads, echoing the dragons of the College crest. Also in summer 2006, Trinity’s largest meeting room, the Danson Room, became fully accessible with the provision of a disabled lift which also serves the College’s War Memorial Library.
www.trinity.ox.ac.uk Begbroke Science Park An ideal venue for an Away Day
xford University Begbroke Science Park is an idyllic Oconference venue offering modern facilities in tranquil, landscaped surroundings, yet is just five miles from Oxford. The Science Park is centred round a Jacobean farmhouse dating from c.1625, which has recently been sensitively restored and now houses the main conference room and an elegant dining room. A mature walled garden surrounds the farmhouse providing a pleasant option for coffees or break-out areas, and beyond the garden there is ample parking. Begbroke’s calm and seclusion make it an ideal venue for an Away Day. One such event was held here in May 2006 for the Environmental Change Institute. Forty-five people attended and delegates were able to use the facilities of the meeting rooms in the Farmhouse as well as relaxing and holding break- out sessions in the walled garden. In commenting on the day, the Institute said: ‘I found the administrative staff very helpful, prior to the event and on the day. The lunch was excellent, in particular the variety of vegetarian options provided. We had a very enjoyable and extremely productive day at Begbroke.’ Sponsorship and raising money for charity were also on the minds of the Begbroke Directorate this year when it hosted a lunchtime seminar focusing on business opportunities. The money raised was donated to Cancer Research. www.begbroke.ox.ac.uk
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n 2006 a particularly bold initiative at St Benet’s Hall Iproved a great success, drawing a full house of students St Benet’s Hall from as far afield as California, Australia and Japan. ‘Shakespeare’s Hidden Code’ Organized by a new, independent company called ResSource by Stratford Caldecott (one of whose directors is a research fellow at the Hall), ‘Shakespeare’s Secret’ was the first international summer school devoted to what has come to be called the ‘dissident theory’ concerning England’s greatest writer: namely, that he was, if not a practising Roman Catholic himself, at least a strong sympathizer with the Catholic underground in Tudor England. Not only that, but his plays and poems are pregnant with a subtext the dissidents would have well understood, amounting to a Shakespearian commentary on the unfolding English Reformation. It sounds a bit ‘Da Vinci’, but the ‘hidden code’ that course tutor Clare Asquith (author of Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare) has discovered in the text of the plays is not as far-fetched as it sounds, and her argument is a lot better grounded in scholarship than any recent blockbuster. In the highly politicized atmosphere around the Tudor and Jacobean court, she shows how Shakespeare was concerned to use his influence to encourage tolerance on one side and patience on the other, and did so by choosing topics and phrases that would send signals in both directions. After the Gunpowder Plot he lost hope in the restoration of the Old Religion, and the Tempest was the last play written by his own hand—ending with a blatant reference to ‘indulgences’ as though to signal the author’s religious allegiance. That Shakespeare’s family was Catholic, and that he remained attached to that milieu, is now commonly accepted. Jesuit scholar Peter Milward has been arguing this for years, most recently in his book Shakespeare the Papist, and Michael Woods popularized the idea through his BBC series, In Search of Shakespeare. Asquith developed the idea of a literary ‘code’ after witnessing how dissident writers employed a similar technique under Communist oppression. The Tudors, after all, ran what amounted to a police state, and Renaissance literature is awash with allegories, allusions and secret messages of all descriptions. St Benet’s and ResSource plan to build on the summer school’s success with other ventures in 2007, including another course comparing the English and Italian cultures of the same period, with reference to Shakespeare and Dante. ResSource is also developing an Art School that teaches Renaissance drawing and painting skills. See www.ressource.co.uk for details. http://www.st-benets.ox.ac.uk/
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Civil Ceremonies Choosing an Oxford College or University location for your Civil Ceremony
xford colleges have historically been celibate experienced wedding team tailor their resources to the Oinstitutions even to the extent of only allowing dons to client’s exact requirements, from wedding cakes to flower marry in the late nineteenth century, which in turn led to the arrangements and from drinks receptions to evening Victorian developments of family homes in north Oxford. entertainment. The Mansfield banqueting team can provide Although the majority of the colleges still maintain the long- formal and informal dining options across a range of held tradition of only allowing alumni to marry in the college styles. Please visit www.mansfield.ox.ac.uk for further chapel, three colleges are now registered as licensed information. premises for civil ceremonies. Somerville, Mansfield and St Edmund Hall has beautiful historic surroundings, St Edmund Hall have recently been joined by the Ashmolean which are complemented by friendly staff and excellent Museum in a growing number of venues within the University cuisine. The Hall has three rooms to accommodate 10-250 to offer this service to members of the public. people, from the intimate original medieval Dining Hall to These venues provide several locations within their the great Wolfson Hall. Civil ceremonies, receptions and buildings ideal for a civil ceremony. They offer a backdrop of evening events can be catered for. historical architecture, beautiful gardens, opulent http://www.seh.ox.ac.uk/ surroundings and wonderful cuisine to make that special The Ashmolean Museum has been hosting wedding day a truly memorable one. receptions for many years and is now, with its newly- Somerville College offers six different locations for the acquired licence, taking bookings for civil ceremonies. ceremony to take place and can provide a wide range of The Ashmolean is an ideal location for a wedding. Situated catering options, including formal dinners, drinks receptions in the city centre and against the backdrop of a stunning and evening functions. Please visit example of neo-classical architecture, weddings can take www.some.ox.ac.uk/conferences for more details of what place in the Mallet Gallery or the Randolph Gallery, they can offer. followed by a reception and dinner in the vaulted café, with Mansfield College endeavours to make every wedding a entertainment and live music if desired. Every booking unique occasion, providing you with the support you need to supports the work of the Museum. create the most memorable of days. To this end their http://www.ashmolean.org/weddings/
7 CONFERENCE OXFORD PR Campaigns Familiarization The main objective of the first Conference Oxford PR Campaign was to raise awareness of the Conference Trips for Agents Oxford brand, and this was achieved by its PR agency, Each year Conference Oxford handles well over 1,000 Davies Tanner, through a range of targeted public enquiries for every type of event with a significant relations activities aimed at the local, regional and percentage coming via events and conference agencies. We national press. are keen to give agency colleagues the opportunity to A key part of the Campaign was a press trip organized broaden their portfolio of venues within the University and for event trade and business journalists to view the amongst the colleges. To this end we regularly arrange venues and facilities that the University of Oxford and the Familiarization Trips specifically for agencies. The most Colleges have to offer the event organizer. Venues visited recent of these was held on 10 November and included included the Saïd Business School, Christ Church, the visits to St Catherine’s College, Rhodes House and Christ Sheldonian Theatre and St Anne’s College. Journalists Church. Limited to 25 places we were very pleased by the were treated to an enthralling talk by Colin Dexter, creator response to invitations. of the hugely popular Inspector Morse and an after-dinner speech from Lord Patten, Chancellor of the University of Familiarization Trips in 2007—open to all—will include: Oxford. He was also interviewed by the Daily Telegraph’s 2 February 23 March economics editor, Edmund Conway, for an article in the • Begbroke Science Park • St Hilda’s College business supplement. • Lady Margaret Hall • Merton College Press releases were drafted regarding Conference • Jesus College • Mansfield College Oxford’s newest members and its re-launched website which gained good press coverage. Conference Oxford’s 18 May 8 June conference manager, Sally Dunsmore, was interviewed • Egrove Park • Department of Continuing for features in Conference and Incentive Travel Magazine, • Pembroke College Education Exhibiting Magazine and Conference News. Government • University College • Harris Manchester College Business and Education Business News are planning • Wadham College features in November 2006 on academic venues, including a case study by St Antony’s College, and RSVP Similar Trips will be organized later in the year. If the dates magazine featured Conference Oxford and its suppliers, are not convenient for you, Conference Oxford is always happy City Audio Visual and Daisies Flowers, in ‘A View from to arrange individual show-rounds either of a general nature or the City’. focused on a particular event type or size. Please do contact us, if this fits in better with your schedule and requirements. The next PR campaign starts in November and runs until February 2007. The largest event taking place For further information or to book a place, please contact during this time is International Confex, at which Marie O'Connor on 01865 287378 or [email protected] Conference Oxford plans to have a stand. Another press trip is planned for the US press, combining a trip to Confex with a visit to Oxford. A variety of features to For enquiries, a brochure, and further details of promote Conference Oxford will also be placed in key conference and event facilities at the University of Oxford media along the themes of secret gardens, film Oxford and the Colleges, contact: and historic sustainability. CONFERENCE OXFORD Conference Oxford is also keen to lead the way in THE PAINTED ROOM Oxford’s build up to the 2012 London Olympic Games. 118 HIGH STREET Business hospitality at the Games may require meeting OXFORD OX1 4BX facilities elsewhere, and the University of Oxford and the Telephone/fax: +44 (0)1865 276190 Colleges would be a perfect venue, away from the telephone/fax: +44 (0)1865 276190 frenetic activity of the Games, yet reasonably close e-mail: [email protected] to London. website: www.conference-oxford.co.uk