Salisbury Oxfam is having an ‘Africa Week’ to help raise funds for the Kilimanjaro Charity Climb in July 2010 by Shaula Maitland and Sophie Tadhunter. Mount Kilimanjaro stands at a mighty 19,330 ft, making it the highest point in Africa. Shaula and Sophie aim to raise £5000. through local fundraising events and sponsorship. All the money raised for Oxfam will be used in Ethiopia to aid:

• 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.

Oxfam’s Tag Your Bag Gift Aid scheme is now active in both Salisbury Oxfam shops! This is an exciting new scheme that allows Oxfam to make an extra 28p in the £1 for items we sell that were donated through the scheme by claiming back the tax from the government through the Gift Aid process.

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!

This year, Xfm’s Winter Wonderland is supporting Oxfam. So as you love your music, we’re letting you know about how you can win tickets to see:

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’re currently looking for new invigilators for Oxhibitions, our new gallery at 10 – 14 CATHERINE STREET, above the Oxfam bookshop.

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