Artistic Expression
The Jacqueline du Pré Music Building (JdP), our beloved performance venue and creative hub, has helped St Hilda’s to become one of Oxford’s top colleges for the arts, especially in music and dance.
The JdP’s 30th anniversary in 2025 provides a wonderful moment to celebrate its profound impact and to establish firm foundations for the coming decades. With your help to raise £500,000 by the end of the anniversary year, we can:
- Upgrade audio-visual equipment, showcasing artists at their best. This will include a new lighting rig, projector, speakers, acoustic curtains and studio gear, creating an immersive live experience and better streaming capabilities.
- Launch an ‘Artist Fund’ to broaden the range of projects we can host at the JdP, encouraging new collaborations between guest artists and talented students. We will keep ticket prices affordable and inclusive.
- Expand our community engagement programme, which uses music and the arts to inspire and support all ages, from toddlers to those living with dementia.
By raising at least £1.5 million to establish an endowment fund, together we can also secure the venue’s future for the College, the City, and beyond.
In 1997 in my Hall Building room, I wrote some poems and put them on the wall. My Scout asked for a copy of one of them as it reminded her of a friend who’d died. Then in 2011 at a hospital in Grantham, I introduced myself as a doctor to a new patient. The woman immediately asked if I had been to St Hilda’s. She was that same Scout and said she still had my poem, with my name in the bottom corner of it, on her wall!
– Dr Rebecca Ashton (McConnell, Physiological Sciences, 1994)
