Four-year lead-in offers UK-wide opportunities for participation in Olympic cultural
programme.
The framework for the Cultural Olympiad has been unveiled to an audience of arts sector professionals by London 2012, the body responsible for co-ordinating activity relating to the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. A four-year UK-wide Cultural Festival and ten other major projects are to form the basis of plans for the cultural celebrations. The festival will begin in the summer of 2008, led by a network of Creative Programmers, and aims to encompass thousands of national, local and regional events. Other projects taking place in the run up to, and during the Olympics will include an international exhibitions programme, a Shakespeare festival, a celebration of disability arts and sport, a carnival and a world festival of youth culture. Live Sites, a network of permanent and temporary giant screens, will aim to take London 2012 to the heart of the UKs towns and cities, and a further project, Artists Taking the Lead, will create great art in iconic and unexpected places around the country.
This element of the Cultural Olympiad is to be jointly supported by the four UK arts councils and will involve 12 artists commissions, designed to celebrate local and national cultural life in each of the nine English regions and in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Describing the plans as an unprecedented opportunity, Sarah Weir, Executive Director of Arts Council England, London, said this would not be the only contribution the arts sector would make, but struck a cautious note when she said, We cannot know the level of investment available for Artists Taking the Lead until after the outcome of the Governments Comprehensive Spending Review and the budget settlement of the devolved regions is known later this year. However, we see this announcement as the beginning of an exciting journey for children, young people and communities across the UK: a journey on which artists will rise to the challenge and take the lead.
Plans for the Cultural Olympiad also involve investment from external funders. Youth Music is dedicating £9m to youth-inspired and youth-led community music-making activities. It aims to help communities across the country to benefit from the Games by providing access for children and young people to high quality musical activities linked to the core values and themes of the Olympics. The newly-formed Legacy Trust UK, whose remit includes leaving a lasting legacy of the 2012 Games for future generations, has earmarked funding for 15 projects involving organisations working in the youth and cultural fields.
Announcing the cultural programme, Bill Morris, Director of Culture, Ceremonies and Education for London 2012, also gave early details of a non-commercial quality mark that will give official London 2012 endorsement to exceptional not-for-profit sporting, cultural and community projects inspired by London 2012. The mark will be very clearly part of the official London 2012 brand family, with a similar shape of logo, adapted for use in the cultural sector. The purpose of the mark is to allow the impact of the 2012 Games to extend as widely as possible, and underpin the vision that London 2012 will be Everyones Games. The mark will be made available in a limited way from the start of the Cultural Olympiad in August 2008.