Sarah Mayhew Craddock on art in surprising places

Christmas comes but once a year, and whichever way one looks at it, it is important. It’s a time of storytelling, it presents an opportunity to surprise, to shine a spotlight, and to shine.

Tomorrow at 5.30pm the doors of various cultural venues across the city will be flung open and the public will be invited to step inside for free. It’s the start of Oxford Christmas Light Festival, an exciting programme of art, music, dance and performance, which continues until Sunday.

This year the streets of Oxford will look significantly different to the fantastic festive spectacle that was coordinated to see the season in last year. The events will be a little quieter, a little more reflective, a little more sophisticated perhaps. Some of Oxfordshire’s most respected cultural organisations will produce events in the shape of true artistic gifts to the public, gifts that will make your heart sing... or perhaps hum, vibrate, twitter, pulse, glow or whirr.

Oxford Contemporary Music, for one, will lure visitors to some of Oxford’s most intriguing nooks and crannies with equally intriguing seasonal sound installations by some of the UK’s finest artists and musicians.

The most intriguing to my mind, incongruously nestled amongst the hubbub of George Street, is Pod by Mike Blow & Alison Ballard that will be installed in the Oxford University History Faculty Garden. Listen out for the pulsating low frequency sound of these alluring large sonic sculptures; move closer and place your hands and ears on the giant, tactile orbs to feel and hear the mysterious sounds that lie within. Pod will be open on Friday and Saturday (4.30pm-10.30pm).

Other curious sounds will emanate from the Lamb & Flag Passage, on St Giles where Twittering Machine by Kathy Hinde will be free to experience, similarly on Friday and Saturday nights. Motors will flutter and twitch, pulling at the tails of toy swanee whistles while a customised pipe-organ sends sporadic short blasts of air resulting in a playful bird-imitation machine housed high in an old chestnut tree.

Anyone with LEGO on their Christmas list might be interested in visiting The Old Museum in Oxford Town Hall on the Saturday and Sunday to experience the equally curious sound and light installation, Play House, by Alex Allmont. Play House is an automata that mechanically performs ever-changing compositions like a generative musical loom. Visitors can watch rhythm patterns change as the sequence of LEGO gears, levers and latches mutate riffs within the sculpture.

Venture off the beaten sensory track into Sound Explorers with Dan Fox, in which visitors can explore the hidden sounds around them and plunge into a world they never knew existed in The Story Museum on Saturday (11am-3).

Sunday also sees over 700 singers from schools and community choirs across Oxfordshire share their talents in public spaces across the city centre as part of Day of Song, organised by local composer Cat Kelly. Many of the singers will gather at 5pm to perform a grand finale in Oxford Town Hall.

Magdalen Road Studios and Pegasus Theatre are coordinating Streetlight, a pop-up festival melding live music, art, open studios, performances and family friendly activities celebrating the vibrancy and talent present in this strip of East Oxford.

The Ashmolean has a host of unexpected artistic activity in the form of Oxfordshire Artweeks Christmas Marketplace (Sunday 11am-4pm).

For original performance art, head to Oxford Playhouse’s The Knowledge Emporium Show at Gloucester Green where theatre company Slung Low will spend Friday and Saturday gathering the stories and secrets of the people of Oxford in exchange for sweets. Slung Low will then transform these tales into a live performance at 3pm on Sunday.

Oxford Christmas Light Festival
Friday to Sunday. oxford.gov.uk/christmas