Our birthday party

Say what you like about Robert Hutchison but he's not a man to miss the chance of a good party. As he prepares to retire as Oxfordshire's very own Culture Kaiser and general overseer of festivals and fun, it looks like this time he has really excelled himself.

For after giving us Oxford: the Evolving City, he is planning to sign off with the celebration of all celebrations: Oxfordshire's very own Millennium.

The man who arrived in Oxford nearly four years ago to lead Oxford's brave but ultimately unsuccessful bid to be the 2008 European Capital of Culture has gone on to create a lasting monument to his prolonged stint here, in the form of Oxford Inspires, the city's cultural development agency.

Now his baby has been given a new lease of life with, of all things, a thousandth birthday party for Oxfordshire.

The fun started on Wednesday when a multi-coloured Ox was projected on Didcot power station as the logo for Oxfordshire 2007. The symbol, says Oxford Inspires, is "a play on the famous White Horse etched in chalk on to Oxfordshire hills". Only this week in Didcot, to represent the whole of Oxfordshire, "the horse has been transformed into a multi-coloured ox".

It promised to be the start of a year-long programme of events with no fewer than 70-plus festivals that will not only celebrate "the huge range and diversity of cultural experience that the county has to offer" but sport, science, food, the environment as well as the arts.

More than 30 special events are to include an Eat the County Food Festival, Street Olympics, Faces of Oxfordshire, Summer Saturdays and a Go with the Flow Waterways Festival.

And as with most other epic festivals involving Oxford Inspires, the agency will seek to link up with other events that were already at an advanced stage of planning: in the Millennium's case, the 50th anniversary of Blackbird Leys and the opening of the Diamond Light project at Harwell. To get more ideas, Oxford Inspires is to hold a series of forums at Witney Corn Exchange (June 29); Oxford Town Hall (July 3); Abingdon Guildhall (July 4); Banbury Town Hall (July 10); and Crowmarsh Gifford Council Chamber (July 17).

The Millennium idea certainly seems to have caught the imagination of local councils. Even in these cash-strapped times Oxfordshire County Council and Oxford City Council are together contributing £200,000 towards meeting its costs. A total of £100,000 will be allocated to marketing and £100,000 to "kick starting selected special cultural and sporting events".

It comes as no surprise to learn that the Millennium is actually the brainchild of Mr Hutchison himself, although it is amusing to hear of his own moment of inspiration.

The agency is now based in Oxford Central Library, since leaving its original home in the Said Business School, and, taking advantage of his new surroundings, the chief executive found himself looking through Oxfordshire: The County in Colour by the county council's Head of Oxfordshire Studies, Malcolm Graham.

In it his eyes fell on the sentence: "Oxfordshire was a latecomer among English counties, established around 1007 on the border land between Wessex, Mercia and the Danish settled area to the north and east."

If he was looking for a peg for a big festival, in the year before Liverpool's year as the official European Capital of Culture, this surely had to be it. Thanks to good old Eadric Streona and his decision to create English shires (at least according to one version of events), Oxford Inspires had another county-wide celebration on its hands.

Some academics will argue that closer examination of data from Anglo-Saxon administrative documents shows the date is highly debatable. Others have claimed the foundation date for Oxfordshire is 912 and 860 for Berkshire so the date has already been missed. More controversially, Mr Hutchison has also reopened that old hornet's nest about a large chunk of Oxfordshire south of Hinksey still belonging to Berkshire.

Never mind a thousand years old, the Oxfordshire that we know today only dates from 1974, traditionalists will tell you. Its creation owes far more to Peter Walker (Edward Heath's Environment Secretary who oversaw the redrawing of county boundaries) than Eadric Streona.

As one correspondent to The Oxford Times, A. Watson, put it: "The people of Abingdon, Didcot and all other towns and villages to the south of the river have only been part of Oxford for 32 years and to ask them to celebrate a spurious anniversary seems absurd. It would be more legitimate to ask them to celebrate their association with Berkshire, of which they were part for more than 1,100 years and which still exists as a geographical unit."

Promoting such a thing gave the impression of an organisation looking for a purpose to justify its existence, the reader suggests.

The ever-affable Mr Hutchison grins widely, when I ask whether it is just an excuse for a party.

"Well, I don't object to having an excuse to hold a party," he said. "But a respected local historian thinks it's close enough to a millennium and we are satisfied with that. It is a chance to celebrate what Oxfordshire has achieved. One of the things about marking its millennium is to recognise that Oxfordshire was an important part of the country long before the university came along.

"You sometimes need to take stock in this fast-moving world. In cultural terms, it is an opportunity. It's all good fun. People can join or not join in as they see fit."

He readily admits that he came to Oxford only expecting to stay the city's arts champion for five months. As the former boss of Southern Arts, who had previously worked as a BBC radio producer and publisher, he was recruited after Oxford emerged as the only city in southern England to make the short list for the 2008 Capital of Culture crown.

I find it a bit of a surprise to hear him declare that it had effectively been a Mission Impossible from the start.

"I never thought it likely that Oxford was going to become European Capital of Culture. Once it became clear that the main criteria in the selection were going to be social and economic, it was always likely to be a big northern city. Oxford always had one great strength. It was the most European of the cities."

The title, ultimately, went to Liverpool. But the strength of Oxford's showing, which saw it shortlisted and named City of Culture, persuaded the city council, the county council and both universities to see Oxford Inspires as a long-term arts project. Its next big project was Evolving City, which Mr Hutchison heralded as "the largest collaborative cultural venture that Oxford has ever seen".

But what most impressed many observers was Mr Hutchison's ability to deliver £600,000 to fund the programme, much of it coming from the Lottery and arts agencies.

As the Southern Arts boss, he had been responsible for handing out the cash and his understanding of the system has certainly worked in Oxford's favour in recent years.

The former leader of the city council, Alex Hollingsworth, insisted that in terms of return on investment, Oxford Inspires represents one of the city best-ever investments.

An estimated 125,000 people attended Evolving City events, with 1,400 artists contributing. But critics of the agency say many of the events were going to take place anyway, with some local groups privately grumbling that they were left to do the organising while Oxford Inspires did the "co-ordinating" and evaluation reports at the end.

Some even suspected that Oxford Inspires ended up soaking up cash that would have been better ploughed directly into community projects and well-established festivals.

News that the Cowley Road Carnival would have to be scrapped this year because of lack of funds also caused some raised eyebrows after Oxford Inspires proclaimed the 2005 festival the "biggest and best" to date.

Last year, it cost £100,000 to stage, with half coming via a one-off grant from Oxford Inspires. It was only the intervention of BMW, which is to sponsor an Eat the World event, that has ensured Cowley Road will see a festival on July 2.

Others detected a patronising tone behind the strong "social inclusion" element of its work and its determination to back arts activities in the city's more deprived areas.

In any case, a key decision about its future direction will see Oxford Inspires moving increasingly away from organising events.

"We will bring about new partnerships and not try to be producers," said Mr Hutchison. "We have initiated the Millennium and are promoting it. But each individual event will be put on by other organisations, rather than us trying to organise too much ourselves."

Interestingly, he has always believed that one of his most important jobs has been to get the city and the universities to work more closely together.

On reaching 65, Mr Hutchison, who has continued to live in Winchester, wants to concentrate on environmental campaigning and writing.

He can leave in September, happy in the knowledge that his friend and former colleague, Sarah Maxfield, will be succeeding him as chief executive. Miss Maxfield, 43, currently head of cultural development at Kent County Council, had worked as his deputy chief executive of Southern and South East Arts.

With a thousand years of life in Oxfordshire to celebrate and the agency's ability to attract funding, neither inspiration nor cash should be in short supply.