With creative types preparing for Oxfordshire Artweeks, festival director Esther Lafferty gives a preview of what is in store during the 2015 event

Oxford and Oxfordshire burst into life this spring as nearly a thousand artists and designer-makers prepare for four hundred open studios events and exhibitions across the county for Oxfordshire Artweeks (May 2 to 25 ) in the longest-running and biggest event of its kind.

It’s an opportunity to discover the rich creative talent in every corner of the county and discover some unique and interesting piece of art inspired by Oxford’s dreaming spires, the beauty of the Cotswolds, the upper reaches of the Thames, or the ancient Ridgeway.

Potters and painters, designers and textile artists, sculptors, wood-turners, silversmiths and furniture-makers are all be opening their studios and workspaces across the county to showcase their work, their materials and processes and from fashion to furniture, in collage, in mosaic, on fabric, on film and on canvas.

You can see the tales of wonderful places and journeys travelled, their ideas and inspirations transformed into art you can carry home.

And you can get a preview now.

Artweeks launch party was held last week at The Jam Factory which is hosting Sea View: an Artweeks taster exhibition for April.

And at Blackwell’s Cafe in Broad Street, Oxford, this month you can take a trip around the rest of the county while sipping a coffee with Exploring Oxfordshire: an exhibition by Anna Dillon.

From the Windrush River running though Witney to the famous and mystical Uffington White Horse in Vale, Anna showcases this region in all its seasons and rural splendour.

The Artweeks festival kicks off on the May 2, with Oxford artists mainly showing between May 9 to 17.

Hundreds of artists will be showing in the city in a variety of venues from Bartlemas Chapel, once part of a leper hospital, just metres metres from the bustle of East Oxford’s Cowley Road to Paloma Rockwell’s riverside studio overlooking Magdalen Deer Park, Oxford’s Town Hall and the Oxford Playhouse, where artist-in-residence Michael Gabriel exhibits drawings made from the back of the auditorium during performances 

For more information on Oxfordshire Artweeks visit artweeks.org