On the evening between last Tursday and Saturday the “Oxford Inspires” project held a fire festival on Broad Street in Oxford. I diced to go, along with my camera, on Friday.

Most of the northern side of Broad Street had installations of various ironwork, some of which were chimney type objects, others were structures which could hold wax filled flowerpots. The chimney structures had adjustable, bowl-shaped hearths which could be moved up and down allowing the amount of draw, and hence flame, to be varied. At the very centre of Broad Street stood a 40ft high bamboo pylon from which a firey pendulum swung (apparently 1000 times, once for every year since Oxford was founded) and a bandstand on which various musicians played to accompany the show. And finally, outside Balliol College was a huge steel chandelier housing lots of flaming flowerpots.

As artistic “experiences” go it wasn’t bad, other than for the huge numbers of people. It was impossible to use a tripod but despite that I did manage to get a few usable images…