What is the Oxford Foundry?

The Oxford Foundry is the University of Oxford's new entrepreneurship centre. We are creating a diverse, student-led community where innovation and creativity lives and breathes. We want to support all of our 24,000 students across the University - whether they are lawyers, medics, engineers or philosophers - in becoming more entrepreneurial in outlook and action.

A key focus is to enhance employability through entrepreneurship amongst students. The Foundry inspires students to think more entrepreneurially, to find like-minded people, to build confidence and overcome fear of failure. Venture creation, growth and support is also a major focus for the Foundry, through our accelerator programme, OXFO L.E.V8, and through our programme for female founders and leaders, L.E.V8 Women. 

The Foundry is about people, it’s about finding your tribe and unleashing your best you. We want to support students to ‘smash it’ and achieve success. Success means different things to different people and we want to help give students the practical skills they need to support their respective futures.

Where are we?

Located on Hythe Bridge Street, in a building that was once the Oxford Ice Factory, the building is a large, easily accessible space that includes a cafe space, and facilities for co-working, socialising, workshops, events and more. 

Supporting Students:

The Oxford Foundry supports our student community in three ways:

• Engagement: creating a diverse and creative environment, attracting students from across the University, hosting a student advisory board, providing access to support funds and bringing inspirational figures to our audiences.
   
• Education: delivering hands-on learning through workshops that range from skills-building around resilience and problem-solving, to planning and team-building skills, idea generation competitions and hackathons. We're creating an online e-library, providing opportunities to learn more about digital futures. We want to give students tools and skills for their futures, whatever career path they choose.
   
• Acceleration: our accelerator, OXFO LEV8, is based in the upper floor of the Foundry. Through the accelerator, a select number of startups are provided with co-working space as well as a suite of support to accelerate their growth - all of this is provided at no charge, and without handover of IP from students to the Foundry. Full information on LEV8 is here.

Opening hours and Facilities:

The Foundry is open from 9am until 10pm every day of the week, Monday to Sunday.

There is a self-service cafe area, comfortable sofas, plus work desks and free wifi.