Hundreds of homes, studios, workshops and galleries across Oxfordshire will be throwing open their doors for this year’s Artweeks festival.

Throughout May, 400 exhibition spaces ranging from people’s front rooms to schools, churches and charities, will be open free of charge to the public, with work on show from more than 1,000 artists.

The festival is in its 27th year and around 60,000 people are expected to visit one of the many exhibitions.

Taking part in the project for the first time will be the Prison Phoenix Trust, based in Summertown, Oxford, which will be exhibiting artwork created by prisoners over the past two decades.

Trust deputy director Jason Doble said: “We are a small charity and we correspond with prisoners and sometimes we get sent pictures.

“This is a good chance for people to see artwork which has been produced from a specific situation. It’s very intense and quite unusual.”

Drawings by illustrator Korky Paul, who collaborated with the charity to produce a yoga book for prisoners, will also be on show at the exhibition at Prama House, Banbury Road, from Saturday, May 9 to Friday, May 15.

Tei Williams, of Artweeks, said: “Even though the organisation has been in existence for 27 years, it’s continually finding new artists and exhibitions spaces to included in this hugely successful festival. This year, there is an opportunity to go to Didcot’s Diamond Light Source to see artwork inspired over the past 40 years by the UK’s largest science facility.

“Opportunities like that don’t come around very often.”

An art competition is being run alongside Artweeks for school children on the theme of My Journey to School, with winners’ work going on display at Leckford Place School in North Oxford on Friday, May 15, to Sunday, May 17.

Participating artists are also being invited to compete to design a wine label for Oxford Wine Company, which will be launching a new red wine from the Languedoc region of France this year.

The winning design will go on the label of the 600 limited edition bottles, with the winner to be announced at an Artweeks fundraising dinner at Corpus Christi College on Friday, March 20.

The city Artweek will take place from Saturday, May 9 to Sunday, May 17, with exhibitions in the north of the county taking place from Saturday, May 2 to Sunday, May 10, and in South Oxfordshire between Saturday, May 16 and Monday, May 25.

As part of the programme, a trail of 20 artists’ open studios in the Henley area will be on offer, and All Saints’ Methodist Church in Abingdon will be joining the festival for the first year to help mark its 50th anniversary.

The full list will be available in April, at libraries, tourist information centres, museums, galleries and shops, or from artweeks.org