Daily schedule
After registration on Sunday afternoon, we invite you to a welcome meeting in the Amersi Lecture Theatre in New Quad, where you will meet your tutors. Join us in Deer Park afterwards for our opening drinks reception, followed by dinner in Brasenose’s historic dining hall (informal dress).
Seminars take place on weekday mornings. Most afternoons are free, allowing you time to explore Oxford, enjoy a variety of optional social events (see details below), or to sit back and relax in one of the college's atmospheric quads.
Your course culminates on Friday evening with a closing drinks reception and gala farewell dinner at which Certificates of Attendance are awarded. For this special occasion smart dress is encouraged (no requirement to wear dinner suits or gowns).
Social programme
We warmly invite all Inspiring Oxford students to take part in our optional social programme, with all events provided at no additional cost. Events are likely to include:
- Croquet on the quad
- Chauffeured punting from Magdalen Bridge
- Expert-led walking tours of Oxford
- Optional visit to an Oxford Library or the Ashmolean Museum
- River Thames afternoon cruise
- Quiz night in the college bar
- Scottish country dance evening (where you do the dancing!)
Seminars
Monday
Writers — The Final Word
What happens when writers reach the end of their story, or their life? We begin by exploring the power of the written word at life’s edge. We read the tender last lines of WWI poets who braved the horrors of the front-line trenches, the blazing final works of Sylvia Plath that seem to presage her tragic death, and the lucid yet fading voice of Iris Murdoch. All of these feel poignant for different reasons.
From Jane Austen’s unfinished Sanditon, a testament to a life cut short, to George Orwell’s dark and defiant 1984 which marked the end of a brilliant career, we’ll ask: how do final words echo beyond the writer’s life, and why do they stay with us?
Tuesday
Visual Artists — The Last Image
A final painting or photograph can feel like a glimpse through a veil. Today, we step into the studios of artists at the end of their journeys such as Van Gogh whose final painting of the living earth in Tree Roots in the sun seems to show no sign of his mental turmoil. We look at Georgia O’Keeffe’s last work, The Beyond, which appears to be a meditation on existence. And we consider the haunting photography of Bill Biggart as he captures the last, searingly tragic moments of 9/11. So, when contemplating a final work of art, what do we really see and feel; a powerful image, the artist’s ending, or our own reflections on it?
Wednesday
Musicians — The Swansong
For centuries, the 'swansong' has been a symbol of beauty at the edge of silence. Today, we listen to the haunting final works of musicians whose lives ended too soon: Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain, and Janis Joplin, and consider how their songs have come to define them. We also explore the legends and myths that have surrounded such figures and how their music has become iconic. We’ll also explore the graceful leave-taking of composers like Schubert, whose Swansong (Schwanengesang) feels both sorrowful and serene, and ask whether there is a sense of personal and musical resolution in their works.
Thursday
Performers — The Last Bow
For actors, dancers, and performers, the end can come not just with death, but with the fading of the spotlight. Today, we focus on the power of the final performance, from Alan Rickman’s last roles to Rudolf Nureyev’s poignant final dance. We’ll explore the beauty and heartbreak of a performer’s last bow, and what it means to walk into the wings for the final time. Life, as Shakespeare reminded us, is a kind of performance, but what happens when the curtain truly falls?
Today, we will listen to final interviews from actors and screenwriters. We will also think about the final days of performing careers that have come about because of age.
Friday
The Meaning of an Ending
What gives an ending its power? Why do we look to artists’ final works for meaning; about them, and about ourselves? In our closing seminars, we’ll gather everything we’ve discovered and ask the big questions. Do 'last works' reveal something essential about creativity, or are we the ones who bestow them with significance? We ask how and why we make artists into heroes, martyrs, victims, and confessors. We ask whether there is a distinctive quality to last works, or so called ‘late style’. We also explore ideas of legacy, and the human need to find stories that make sense of life’s final act.
