The people of Bicester were invited to think about their town and its future as part of the Art at the Centre project. This was an initiative to involve artists in the improvement to the town centre funded by Arts Council England with support from Cherwell District Council and Bicester Town Council.

At the heart of this, Art at the Centre was all about making the town a better place to live and involving the people of Bicester in that journey. The lead artist Gordon Young wanted to make sure that what he created was meaningful to the people of Bicester.

Borrowing from the arts and environmental organisation Common Ground, people were invited to stop and look again at their town and create their own A-Z for Bicester. They were asked to:

• Stop and look at the everyday, the familiar;

• Look again at Bicester - take a fresh look because if we stop noticing, things may vanish; and

• Feed ideas from this to the lead artist Gordon Young to provide him with valuable material to stimulate his own work and ideas for the town centre.

'Local Distinctiveness is about what small places mean to us.' (Common Ground's ABC Learning to Read Your Locality leaflet; website www.england-in-particular.info). Everyday places are probably more vulnerable than the beautiful or rare because we have become used to them and cease to notice them unless something unusual happens. We tend to take them for granted.

The A-Z's published on this website have not only contributed to the Bicester A-Z but also assisted Gordon Young in his designs for Bicester town centre. Thank you to everyone who created an A-Z, a drawing, picture or just shared their thoughts.

Gordon Young's designs are not yet finalised and the money to implement them has yet to be raised, but his ideas are compiled in the Bicester A-Z Manual which is held by Bicester Town Council and on display at Bicester Library, Summer 2004.