Not long to go until the highly anticipated return of Alice’s Day on Saturday 6th July, a city-wide celebration organised by The Story Museum, dedicated to the curiouser and curiouser world of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – the story beloved around the world and synonymous with the city of Oxford.
Events are family-friendly and city-wide, with Oxford Botanic Garden, Weston Library and Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History taking part, as well as the famous parade on Broad Street, with The Story Museum’s Giant Alice Puppet, and an appearance from the Jabberwock!
This year’s Alice’s Day is themed Fabulous Monsters and Curious Creatures. Visitors may meet a giant Alice in Wonderland – but watch out for the Jabberwock! Along with The Story Museum’s very own giant Alice puppet, this year there will be a 3-metre-high Jabberwock roaming the city. The fabulous monster from Through the Looking Glass will be out and about with a musical wrangler. Crafted by the acclaimed theatre-makers and specialists in large-scale puppetry and magic, Rag and Bone, the Jabberwock will be on the move in central Oxford, blinking its eyes, and snapping its jaws, raising up to its full height of three metres.
Set against the backdrop of Oxford’s world-famous cityscape, Alice’s Day offers a variety of activities, including interactive storytelling, talks, and trails. Meet the Dodo at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History; or join the Mad Hatter’s tea party at the Oxford Botanic Garden in partnership with Whatnot Theatre; explore Oxford’s famous Covered Market with a Curious Creatures trail.
Don’t forget it’s half price entry all day at The Story Museum, where there’s free Wonderland-themed face painting in the Courtyard!
What’s happening on Alice’s Day this Saturday 6th July
The Story Museum:
Half price entry for Alice’s Day at The Story Museum; free face-painting in the Courtyard; help create a giant Jabberwock! (free with ticket entry)
Broad Street Wonderland With The Story Museum
Where: Broad Street
When: 11:30-16:00
Tickets: FREE
Join us on Broad Street and meet giant Alice – but watch out for the Jabberwock! The fabulous monster will be out and about with a musical wrangler. Dress up as your favourite Wonderland character and take a picture at our Selfie Station. With Smoking Apples and Rag and Bone. Bonus points for anyone that spots a nervous white rabbit, grinning Cheshire cat, all-knowing caterpillar, Queen of Hearts and other characters.
Curious Creatures Trail: Covered Market
Pick up your trail map from The Story Museum information desk and head to Oxford’s beautiful historic Covered Market and spot the Curious Creatures. Spot ten creatures and then return to the museum to collect your prize between 14.00-16.00.
With thanks to: Auto Models, Cardews of Oxford, Crystal Spirit Emporium, iScream , John Gowing Jewellers, Next to Nothing, Soctopus, Space Store, The Garden of Oxford, The Woolhound, Unboxed, Wicked Chocolate
Tea Time With Hatter And Hare
Where: Oxford Botanic Garden, in partnership with WhatNot Theatre
When: 10:30, 12:30, 14:30
Tickets: £22 (family ticket 2 adults, 2 children), £13 (family ticket, 1 adult, 2 children), £13 adult, £7 concession, under 3s FREE
Click here to book
Lewis Carroll Society In Partnership With The Bodleian Library
Where: The Weston Library
When: 10:45, 11:30, 12:15, 16:30
Tickets: FREE
10:45 The Oxford Dodo – real and imagined
With Mark Carnall, Collections Manager, Life Collections, Oxford University Museum of Natural History
The cultural resonances, extinction, conservation and human interpretation of the Dodo, plus references to the Carrollian links with specimens at the Museum.
11:30 Alice’s Adventures Under Water
With Lenny de Rooy, author and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ expert
The inspirations for her humorous book, including the ‘fabulous monsters and curious creatures’ which feature, their parallels with the original ‘Alice’ books and references to modern culture, and some surprising revelations about real marine life
12:15 Quest for the Jabberwock
With Brian Sibley, Lewis Carroll Society Chair
The frabjous story of how an Anglo-Saxon Stanza, a Monster from the Tulgey Wood and a Beamish Boy with a Vorpal Blade helped ‘Jabberwocky’ become Lewis Carroll’s most celebrated poem.
OxTrail
In addition to the Alice Day festivities, The Story Museum is also proud to participate in Sobell House’ OxTrail, Oxfordshire’s first ever sculpture trail, also launching on 6th July! The Story Museum’s extra mini-herd of painted oxen will be viewable on Pembroke Street in its temporary ‘Moo-Seum’ next to the Museum’s long established Telephone Box ‘Mouseum’. The Story Museum is also delighted that an Alice-themed Ox, painted by Oxfordshire-based artist Caroline Ritson, will feature as part of the main sculpture trail.
‘We are proud that Alice’s Day has become a firm fixture in Oxford’s annual cultural calendar, with both local people and visitors from around the world coming to celebrate it,’ ‘With city-wide events and happenings, it’s a brilliant way to explore Oxford and get to know what inspired Lewis Carroll’s
The Story Museum’s senior producer Ameneh Enayat
For more information, including a detailed schedule of events and participating venues, visit Alice’s Day | About Us | The Story Museum or see updates on Facebook, X (Twitter) and Instagram.
What is Alice’s Day?
Alice’s Day commemorates an important moment for children’s literature and for Oxford. Alice became one of the most popular, most widely quoted and most widely translated children’s book ever written. It marked the birth of modern children’s literature. After Alice, children’s books became less stuffy and more entertaining. Oxford became a world centre of children’s stories and inspirational home to many authors and illustrators including Kenneth Grahame, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and Philip Pullman.
The story was first told on 4 July 1862 when Charles Dodgson, an Oxford don, took the 10-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters on a boating picnic up the River Thames from Folly Bridge in Oxford. To amuse the children, Dodgson told them a story about a little girl, sitting bored by a riverbank, who finds herself tumbling down a rabbit hole into a topsy-turvy world called Wonderland.
The story so delighted Alice that she begged him to write it down – the result was the 1864 handwritten manuscript Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. The following year the manuscript was published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland under the pen name Lewis Carroll, with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel. A sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, was published in 1871.
Since 2007 The Story Museum has coordinated an annual celebration of this enduringly popular classic, with venues across the city joining in to offer a day of family fun and activities.
About the Story Museum
The Story Museum is situated in the heart of Oxford on Pembroke Street and dedicated to the celebration of stories in their myriad forms. Through immersive exhibitions, gallery spaces, and a dynamic array of events and outreach initiatives, the museum explores the enduring power of stories to both teach and delight.
Comprising a series of exhibition spaces, The Story Museum invites visitors to embark on a journey through literary wonders. The Whispering Wood provides a space where live storytelling comes to life, captivating audiences with the art of spoken tales. Step through wardrobe doors, or tumble down the Rabbit Hole in the Enchanted Library, a space dedicated to storytelling in print and books.
The Treasure Chamber is a temporary exhibition showing ‘Here be Dragons – co-curated by Cressida Cowell and Toothless.
The theatre space, also known as The Woodshed, plays host to regular performances tailored for families, as well as grown-up story-telling sessions and Museum Lates.
For the youngest visitors, Small Worlds is a space dedicated to children under five. Here, stories come alive through a blend of interactive play, crafts, and activities, sparking the imaginations of the littlest storytellers.
Website: www.storymuseum.org.uk
Instagram: @thestorymuseum
Twitter: @TheStoryMuseum
Facebook: @TheStoryMuseum
Youtube: storymuseum
