WELCOME TO OPEN HOUSE

A SHOP THAT SELLS NOTHING BUT STORIES

We’re a public talking shop on housing and homelessness. We like drinking tea, making new friends and talking to strangers about housing. We’re trying to get as many people as possible, especially those without a permanent home, involved in the decisions that are being made about how we house people in Oxford.

Open House is a Makespace Oxford initiative led by Transition by Design and Aspire. We are volunteer run and open for a year so come and get involved.

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‘Nobody needs to feel like a spare part’ – Learning from Open House

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In the final few days of Open House at Little Clarendon Street, The Lankelly Chase Foundation supported a researcher to spend a few days with us towards the end of the project to try and glean what the impact of Open House was, and what the elements were that contributed to it’s success. The report contains valuable insights for us and others on creating and stewarding community spaces, on meaningful participation, on placemaking, on the value of inclusive
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We Won an Award!

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We’re delighted to announce that Open House has won the innagural Meanwhile Prize. Awarded by The Developer magazine, the award recognises pop-up interventions which have made a positive contibution to Place in the UK. Open House’s Lucy Warin travelled to the Homes UK show in London to collect the award and we will be featured in the Spring addition of the magazine alongside five other fantastic projects from around the UK. Open House was commended
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Open House is now closed.

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After a year at 36 Little Clarendon Street, we closed our doors for the last time on Saturday 26th October. We’ve had quite a year, welcoming over 5,400 people through our doors over 195 days of opening and 159 events. This is not the end of Open House. We’ll be taking the next few months to reflect, learn and gather ideas on what could be next for us. We’re always keen to hear from people
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A Packed Programme of Events @ Open House

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October at Open House is jam-packed with exciting events on housing and homelessness. Here’s a short taster of what’s to come but if you’d like more information, please have a look at out What’s On page or find us on Facebook. On the 3rd October, we’re hosting Dr Sara Reis from the Women’s Budget Group to talk about their latest report ‘A Home of Her Own, Women & Housing’. Sara will be joined by Shaista
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We need volunteers!

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We’re entering our final two-months at Open House and we’re in need of some more volunteers to keep the energy going until we close our doors on the 26th October. We’ve lost a few volunteers to the transience of Oxford recently and we’re in need of some sparky new faces to make the final period as great as possible. We’re on the hunt for friendly, kind and reliable people to volunteer as hosts for Open
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We’re Launching a Zine!

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We’re launching ‘Oxford is My Home’ a community-made magazine to tell the hidden stories of housing & homelessness in Oxford. The magazine represents a collaboration between Open House, and the Oxford Poetry Library and is supported by Lankelly Chase. Together, we’ve worked with individuals in Oxford to create a series of poems, stories, illustrations, collages, recorded conversations and journalistic articles which explore what it means to call Oxford ‘home’. Readers of Issue One will hear
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We’re Taking a Summer Break

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The Open House team of wonderful volunteers are taking a well-earned Summer holiday. We’ll be closed for August but will be back in September for a bumper month of events. The last few months have seen visits from the likes of Guy Shrubsole, Charlie Luxton, Maff Potts, Annelise Dodds MP, Vijay Prashad, Asad Rehman, James Meadway, Pat McArdle and Cat Hobbs. We’ve talked about public land ownership, sustainable architecture, housing & a ‘green new deal’
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#RethinkRent : a Tenants Union in Oxford

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Lucille is part of a group of concerned Oxford renters who are working to establish a tenants union to make renting in the city fairer, more secure and more affordable. In the no man’s land of tenants’ rights, Oxford is a city of great power and inequality, where ⅔ of the population is renting. The influx of wealthy students, high paid university staff and transient nature of this population has exacerbated people’s powerlessness. Oxford needs
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