Hey guys, how are you all? If you’re reading this, you are, were, or hopefully will be part of Oxjam nationwide – a brilliant campaigning and fundraising opportunity for Oxfam GB that uniquely broadens their charity audience and raises awareness in fun ways. Oxjam launched in 20 major cities throughout the country this October and thousands of diverse music, film, comedy, theatre and dance events were held to make campaigning for Oxfam’s ‘Here and Now’ climate change initiative a little bit different.

This year, Oxjam Manchester were incredibly ambitious and organized 12 small events and one huge flagship street festival on the 25th of October. Our small events comprised of a number of speed dating extravaganzas where dating questions included, ‘if you were to have the head of any animal, which would it be?’ and ‘would you lick someone’s stomach on the first date?’ (we’ll let you answer those!). There were independent film nights, family fun days, busks and live music-filled evenings. 

All together, including the our flagship, small events and all our events managed by passionate volunteers in Greater Manchester, we raised a whopping £5,000! Hooray!

Establishing a music festival in a huge city like Manchester was rather difficult! We enjoyed curating our own fundraisers, but the most important thing for us was to link up with other people in the city. We made friends with Mr Scruff and partied Oxjam-style at his last club night at the magical Music Box. We busked with the guys at Spinningfields to attract local bankers. We knitted, crafted and did the lindy-hop with fantastic local indie nights. We dressed as cows, grizzly bears and polar bears and painted ourselves ‘campaign blue’ all to raise awareness for Oxfam’s ‘Here and Now’ climate change campaign. We gathered a community of followers and supporters and without these people we might not have been so magical: Urbis, Spinningfields, Zion Arts Centre, Fuel, Micron, Mr Scruff, Thistle Hotels, Common, Odd, Matt and Phreds, Nexus Art Cafe, Night & Day, Mint Lounge, Apotheca & Dough, Bluu, Halewood International, Don’t Panic, Rain Bar, Studio Lotus, Blacka Acoustics, Blueprint Studios, The Great Little Cupcake Co., 4Q Magazine. Apologies to anyone we’ve left out!

We hope our successes can inspire charity fundraising in the local area and that individuals will continue to be as generous with their time and energy. The Oxjam Manchester team for 2009 was Sophie, Sam, Alice, Sylvia, Harriet, Carmen and Andrew, and if you need any Oxjam-based help for next year, get in touch. We hope you enjoyed the show.

So, for now, signing off…

Oxjam Manchester will see you next year!