University appeals for £1bn

5:13pm Friday 16th May 2008

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Oxford University is to launch the biggest fundraising campaign in its history at the end of the month.

The staggering scale of the university's ambitions will be set out at a major media event at the British Academy in London by Chancellor Lord Patten and Dr John Hood, the Vice-Chancellor.

It is understood that the university will be seeking to raise more than £1bn. The money will fund a series of major building projects across the city centre, including a new £600m city centre campus on the Radcliffe Infirmary site.

The massive fundraising effort, the largest ever launched by a European university, will be branded as Oxford Thinking: The Campaign for the University of Oxford.

Over the past two years, Oxford University has come forward with a series of major proposals, including the £50m refurbishment of the Ashmolean Museum and a £130m overhaul of its library service. It is also hoping to create a £29m book depository on the Osney Mead Industrial estate - plans will be the subject of a planning inquiry in July - refurbish the New Bodleian in Broad Street and upgrade about half of the Science Area.

The fundraising effort will also fund teaching posts and scholarships to boost the flow of students from poorer backgrounds.

The campaign will be launched on May 28 with the kind of fanfare that surrounded the Campaign for Oxford, which raised more than £225m in the late 1980s.

Dame Vivien Duffield will be introduced as the chairman of Oxford Thinking, which will be presented as an international effort, essential to securing Oxford's future as one of the world's leading universities and centres of research.

Dame Vivien is one of the UK's leading philanthropists, notably in the arts and education. She was the driving force in a campaign that raised £100m from private sources for London's Royal Opera House.