Our Mission

Tandem Collective incubates and produces inclusive, innovative and inspiring creative collaborations which engage with environmental and social issues. Our projects find original ways to platform these issues.

Tandem currently runs Starling Sessions, Oxford’s Global Folk Community Orchestra. Since launching in 2014, Tandem has launched a variety of creative projects, including Tandem Festival, Ethno England, InTandem Publications, RISE zine and Tandem Skills Camp. Tandem also co-founded the Green Arts Oxfordshire Network.

Our aim is to inspire people to find belonging and joy in their community and to use this as a catalyst for taking action in big and small ways.

“What Tandem (Festival) has brought to the community of Oxford is hard to quantify, but for me it has achieved two huge things. The first is to create and hold a space which is the most conducive environment for community collaboration I have ever experienced.

Groups of all kinds were working together, problem solving, engaging the public and making connections which simply don't happen without the right context. The second is a hugely successful provision of celebration for everyone involved - an offer which is always urgent but often overlooked and hard to get right. It has been a pleasure to be involved, and also bloody hard work.”

-Peter Lefort, previously officer of CAG Oxfordshire

Our Values

Grounded in local context

A deep understanding of the particular needs of the community in which we live and work - Oxford city & Oxfordshire more widely.

Accessibility & Inclusivity

Creating spaces that actively include and amplify traditionally excluded voices.

Meaningful participation

Ensuring we create spaces and projects that validate peoples’ creative experiences and allow them to feel heard. 

Symbiotic positive impacts

Ensuring the positive impacts of everything we do are threefold and fully intertwined: social, cultural and environmental.

    • Tandem Festival launches at Hill End Outdoor Centre, Oxford. Tandem is a music festival providing a platform for artists, community groups, local ethical businesses and local people to join up, share & exchange. Tandem is also a community celebration geared around bringing people together and working "in tandem" to inspire new ways of thinking about social and environmental issues

    • Tandem incorporates as a non-profit community interest company (CIC) and expands to offer a year round programme of events and activities through In Tandem with OVADA and Hill End

    • The success of the festival leads to Tandem Festival 2015, as well as the incubation and launch of Ethno England, InTandem Publications and the pre-festival Skills Camp

    • InTandem Pubs launches its fourth volume in November with the title - Coming Up for Air: Ongoing Issues of Air Pollution in the 21st Century

    • Tandem also runs the event Climate Culture: Making the Anthropocene in partnership with the University of Oxford

    • Tandem partners with Restore to hold the fundraising Tandem in the Garden festival at Restore, Oxford

    • The Festival moves to its new home in Ramsden!

    • Tandem also launches the concert series Tandem Sundays with the Oxford venue Silvie

    • Tandem continues to develop Ethno England, InTandem Publications and partners with Abingdon & Witney College to expand the Tandem Skills Camp

    • In partnership with the Oxford University Climate Society and GreenPrint Oxford, Tandem launches RISE zine. The zine includes a range of poetry, art, and writing inspired by the climate catastrophe, from students and the wider Oxford community

    • The zine is launched in Spring 2018, at a celebration involving poetry readings and music from local artists

    • We run our largest festival so far

    • RISE runs its second edition with the theme Protecting the planet: politics and protest

    • Tandem Festival runs for the final time in Ramsden

    • Tandem runs the online festival Tandem in Your Garden, bringing hundreds of people together in living rooms around the world.

    • RISE zine runs into a third edition

    • Tandem and Fusion Arts co-found the Green Arts Oxfordshire Network, with over 50 people and organisations coming together to build a Green Arts Charter for Oxford’s cultural sector

    • Global Folk Orchestra is born with the first gatherings of Oxford-based folk sharing their songs

    • Starling Sessions plays 3 big gigs in Oxford and partners with OCM, DASH Arts, Asylum Welcome, OCA and TAP Social

    • Tandem works with Green Arts Oxfordshire lead Ellie Monk to produce the Great Big Green Week Launch party in Bonn Square

    • Tandem works with YWMP to produce the Tandem Gathering mini-festival at Florence Park Community Centre.

    • Starling Sessions expand their activities with Asylum Welcome, reaching clients at the Kassam Hotel

    • After a couple of years of development, the new city festival No.80 is held at Modern Art Oxford in May.

Tandem’s Timeline