We’ve also got our usual great range of Fairtrade items for sale at Salisbury Oxfam and have stocked up in time for FT Fortnight – so if you’re thinking of switching it’s a great time to do so!

You can also download a copy of the poster to print off and put up somewhere from the Salisbury Fairtrade website over here…

Be part of Oxfam’s NEW Salisbury Fundraising Group

We’re looking for enthusiastic people to help raise money for Oxfam’s vital work through fundraising events in Salisbury.

The money you raise will help to alleviate poverty and suffering worldwide by funding health, education and water sanitation projects.

Meet like-minded people and have fun with a team of inspiring individuals.

This is a unique opportunity to have a voice in Oxfam and develop your skills.

Your group’s fundraising can be anything and everything – from cake sales to gala dinners. Furthermore there is a role to suit everyone and the choice is up to you!

What can I do?

• Do – If you are interested in joining this new group contact Agatha Morris: amor...@oxfam.org.uk, 07769342545
• Do – If you can think of somewhere you could put some flyers, you can download and print these out…
• Explore – Find out more about Oxfam’s vital work here

Be Amazing : Be Humankind

However to get the full benefits of this for you and us we’d love people to Like our new Facebook page which you can find over at http://facebook.com/salisburyoxfam. We’re planning to share photos of our current exhibitions there, create shop events so you can let us know you’re coming and more over time as we work out the many great things we can do with it.

We’ve already been on Twitter for around a year now, amassing a sizable following, and have really enjoyed taking part in that community of Salisbury residents, Salisbury businesses, other Oxfam shops and of course the wider world! We think this will complement that excellently, so don’t worry if you’re already a follower or fancy coming and joining in: we certainly won’t be moving from @salisburyoxfam anytime soon!

However, we think that people still have some things stored away at home that they are happy to donate to Oxfam but just haven’t quite made it to our shops yet. This is the time we really need you! Help us keep our stock levels high, our shoppers happy and those Oxfam helps from losing out on the support they need.

Many are now suggesting that we are heading towards the end of the recession, our Trading Director, David McCulloch said:

“This is a crucial moment for us. Over the last eighteen months, people have been buying less, replacing less and therefore donating less to Oxfam. Now sales are apparently on the increase, we can only wait to see if this is reflected by an increase in donations to our shops.”

We can only hope that this is correct, but in the mean time if you do have something you’ve been meaning to donate we’d love to see you, especially sooner rather than later:

“We rely on the generosity of the public for their stock. Without continued donations of everything from clothing to cookware, Oxfam shops could not continue to play such a key role in communities across the UK.”

For the shoppers out there, don’t worry, our shops are currently still well stocked with great bargains and we’re never short of fantastic ethical goods, scrumptious Fairtrade Food and our Oxhibitions Art Gallery will of course continue its monthly exhibitions raising money for Oxfam. We hope you’ll come and visit!

The ‘Crying Lightning’ 7″ features a cover of the Nick Cave classic “Red Right Hand” as a B-side. Each single will cost £2.99 pounds and come with a download code to get an MP3 version of the songs for free.

While picking up a copy, why not bring in any older CDs or Videos that you don’t want anymore for Oxfam to sell to raise more money.

See more information about what’s on the single here.

What can I do?
Shopping – Come in and buy the new Arctic Monkeys album from Salisbury Oxfam when it’s released on August 17th.
Fundraising – Donate any unwanted items to Oxfam when you come in to drop pick up your copy.

Image with thanks to Lola’s Big Adventure! – released under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 – see here for further information.

• Access to education for all Children
• Improvement of basic health care
• HIV/AIDS awareness
• Access to water
• Reducing violence towards women
• Sustainable farming

The ‘Africa Week’ will run from Saturday 25th July – Friday 31st July 2009.

There will be events running throughout the week including:

• Saturday 25th July – African Drummers performing in the main shop throughout the day, Fairtrade Food tasting in the Art Gallery (Oxhibitions), Local artist Rod Hague will be having an Art Workshop in the Art Gallery to run alongside his current exhibition ‘African Afternoon’
• Wednesday 29th July – Rita’s African Art Workshop for Children. To sign up for this visit the Oxfam shop where further details will be available.
• Friday 31st July – A talk by Mary Malpas, an Oxfam employee, on Oxfam in Africa, in the Art Gallery at 11.30am.

For further information please contact the Media Team on 01722 337187 or email med...@salisburyoxfam.org.uk

What can I do?

• Come along to the many events we are having!
• Let your friends know! You can even download and display a poster from here.

There are 3 easy steps to start giving:

1. Complete a simple form to join the scheme. This gives your permission and confirms that you are a UK tax-payer. We’ll then give you some personalised ‘Tag your Bag’ stickers.
2. Every time you bring things into an Oxfam shop, tag each bag with one of your stickers. This allows us to track how much we raise from the sale of your items.
3. Feel good about giving 28% more to Oxfam’s work!

It’s that easy. And it won’t cost you a penny.

What is Gift Aid?

Gift Aid is a scheme introduced by HM Revenue and Customs that allows charities such as Oxfam to reclaim the tax on any cash donated to them from UK tax-payers.

Want more information? Visit this page on the Oxfam GB website.

What can I do?

• Fundraising – If you’re a UK Taxpayer you can join the scheme by completing the form in either Salisbury Oxfam shop.
• Shopping – Come along and grab some great bargains in-store in the knowledge that you might be helping Oxfam even more than you realise, at no extra cost to you!

Kaiser Chiefs, Iglu & Hartly, Ida Maria, Ladyhawke and White Lies – playing the Brixton Academy in London on Tuesday, 2 December.

Scouting For Girls, The View, The Music, The Subways, The Automatic, Cage The Elephant and Kid British – rocking Manchester Academy 1 on Monday, 8 December.

Anyone who donates records, DVDs and CDs or makes a music purchase at participating Oxfam shops will be able to enter a competition to win tickets to Xfm’s Winter Wonderland! Woo! And, furthermore, hoo!

So come on… you don’t really need that copy of ‘The Best Of Blur’, as you’ve got all the original albums anyway. And you were too polite to tell your mum that you didn’t actually like Enrique Iglesias, so that’s last year’s Chrimbo present heading for the Salisbury Oxfam Books and Music shop for a kick-off…

All you have to do is donate or buy some music from Salisbury Oxfam Books and Music and ask for the SECRET WEBSITE ADDRESS.

Good Luck!

The competition closes at midnight Thursday 27 November.

What can I do?

Shopping – Donate or buy music from Salisbury Oxfam Books and Music (10 Catherine Street) and you could win tickets to Xfm’s Winter Wonderland.

WE NEED VOLUNTEER INVIGILATORS URGENTLY, SO IF YOU ARE AN ART STUDENT OR ARE STUDYING SOMETHING SIMILAR EG. PHOTOGRAPHY, OR ARE INTERESTED IN THE ARTS, please ring us on 01722 337187 or ask to speak to Michelle in the shop.

Although this is an unpaid position, it will be in the first ever Oxfam Gallery anywhere, so it will look good on your CV and you will be making history and helping charity too!

Sophie O’Neill

Introduction

26^th April 08 – 26^th June 08

Oxhibitions is pleased to present Introduction, the first solo exhibition by recent art school graduate Sophie O’Neill and also the first artist’s exhibition at Oxfam.

Introduction consists of a group of paintings, drawings and sculpture, mostly created during the last year. That most of these are portraits is no coincidence; the artist particularly enjoys the challenge of presenting realistic representations of the people she knows. The mood of each painting varies according to the effect the artist is trying to convey; in Sister Portraits Part 2, for example, the challenge of painting realistically is combined with the artist’s self-perception. In Journey to… the red line symbolises a journey and the placement of the painting in an empty space of white canvas plays with the traditional use of the entire space and the compositional effect created by this arrangement, in particular the fact that the hands of the older lady ‘escape’ from the ‘painting’.

King of the Couch is a painting surrounded by a painted frame, a concept which has its basis in the tradition of trompe-l’oeil painting. The concept behind Charcoal and Paint is in the materials used; the black areas of the canvas are created by charcoal, while the rest is painted in oils, a technique which the artist would like to explore more in future. Embossed is painted on a canvas, which has been embossed with a line drawing of a girl and a man, which can be seen upon closer inspection, again a concept that the artist would like to explore further in the future. I don’t know how to tell you that I love you is clearly a painting about the attempt to convey feelings to a person, expressed through the darts board with a heart as a bulls-eye instead of the normal circle. Looking closely at the painting, one can see ‘real’ marks in the painting, created by ‘real darts’.

Born in 1982 in Salisbury, O’Neill studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London before leaving to study Graphic Design at Central St Martin’s College, also in London, where she specialised in Photography. She has broad interests and as well as being interested in painting and drawing, is also interested in various areas of design, in particular product design, sculpture, Photography, Fashion and so on. From studying at Goldsmiths she has derived a keen interest in artistic concepts and she strongly believes in learning to convey these as well as possible in her work.

Contact details: Sophie O’Neill, Email: sonm...@yahoo.com, www.sophieoneill.com

Oxhibitions, Salisbury Oxfam, 10-14 Catherine St, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 2DA

Tel: 01722 337187, Email: oxhi...@salisburyoxfam.org.uk, website: www.salisburyoxfam.org.uk