Lucy Askew, chief executive of Creation Theatre, longs for the city hub which is the set of so much drama and creativity

So right now I am sat in a lovely holiday cottage in Cromer, Norfolk, reflecting on my experience of art and culture in Oxford over the last few weeks and wondering where to begin. I guess when you’re away from home it’s the local things that form a part of your weekly routine that you find yourself missing most.

It’s become a bit of a joke in the Creation office that our lives seem to have become a bit like a soap opera or sitcom in as much as there seem to at times be a limited number of characters and sets (not that they’re not also both dramatic and hilarious).

One place which has become a very definite lynchpin set of our show would The Jam Factory. For team Creation it really is our Central Park, Queen Vic or Rovers Return if you prefer. I would be taking artistic licence if I were to claim that any of us had been born or died there, but many new partnerships have been born there over a large Americano — from a first meeting with this summer’s director of Macbeth, Jonathan Holloway, to plotting our autism-friendly performance last year with OYAP and Children in Touch. Every time I’m there it strikes me how lucky we are to have such a great location to meet people in — good service, good food (can’t recommend the Famous Five lunchtime deal highly enough) but most importantly just the sort of interesting, creative environment that suits us. It’s actually a joy to be early for a meeting and have some unencumbered time to sit and take in the latest art on display there.

With 33 per cent of the Creation team now living on canal boats we are of course extra interested in The Jam Factory’s current exhibition Inspired by The Canal, not least because it also involves some of the work of our own very talented Friends co-ordinator, Sarah Mayhew Craddock, with her thought-provoking installation Wait ‘til it Settles.

Another just-opened exhibition we are particularly excited about is The Story Museum’s 26 Characters. Without a show on until Macbeth in August we’ve been using some of our spare time and energy to help transform the museum into 26 displays representing well-known stories.

We’ve been helping with painting and watching is awe as the museum’s incredible team work their magic on this gargantuan task. Following our 2013 Christmas production, the Narnia room was of interest to us as is and Mr Badger’s from The Wind in the Willows (yes that is a big wink at what our Christmas show this year might be!). I was also fortunate enough to pop in to OVADA last week to loan some of our many blankets for snuggling audience for an OCM event.

It really is such a lovely space and resource for the city, if you’ve not been to an event or exhibition there I urge you to. Well after all that I am left feeling rather homesick, but I shall console myself with the thought that however Inspired by the Canal I may have been of late, I have a much better chance of catching a bucket full of crabs off Cromer pier.