London 2012 blog

When London won the rights to host the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, we were granted the most astonishing opportunity - and not just to mount brilliant Games and host the world for six weeks in the summer of 2012.

Because of the unique nature of London's bid, we won the chance to engage the whole of the UK in a celebration of culture, education and sport across the four years from 2008 to 2012. Even more than that, we can use 2012 to help drive long term benefits to our cultural life.

It's now up to all of us in the cultural sector to rise to that challenge, and it's our job in London 2012 to enable and support colleagues in the culture industry as best we can.

Over the last six months, they have helped us hugely as we try to sort out some of the basics. Before the end of the summer (and we're probably looking at June), we’ll be ready to explain the many ways in which the Cultural Olympiad will work. For now I'm happy to offer a progress report.

After a UK-wide consultation with over 3,000 colleagues in the cultural sector, we have reached a strong consensus about the values that should lie at the heart of the Cultural Programme. These values create a firm foundation and clear identity and purpose for everything we do.

They'll apply across all the projects that make up the Culture Programme, from the most modest of community events to the opening ceremonies in 2012.

The next stage is to turn these into firm criteria so that we can evaluate any project as it joins the programme.

We've also established a clear, and open architecture for the Cultural Olympiad. There are three main sections:

1. The ceremonies programme – iconic games protocol such as the opening and closing ceremonies, torch relays, medal ceremonies and team welcome for both games. We’re already working on the handover ceremonies at the end of the Beijing Games next year.

2. National and bid projects – London 2012’s bid listed more than 10 major cultural proposals and these now form part of our contract with the International Olympic Committee. We are still in the early stages of developing these projects and recently reviewed all the Bid projects with our stakeholders. Many of them are making fast progress. As you will see from the blog by John Jefferson on Live Sites, our thinking is ongoing, allowing our projects to develop in a fluid yet structured manner. Our goal is to have clarity about all or most of these by the summer and to be explain how our colleagues in the cultural sector can contribute to them.

3. UK-wide Cultural Festival (only a working title!) – this marks our clear intention to open up the Cultural Olympiad to the cultural and creative sector, and all its communities, far and wide. This has been designed to enable major bodies and small community groups throughout the UK to put forward plans and ideas to help the nation celebrate.

We’re now establishing a delivery plan for each of these three tiers. Alas, we only have budget within London 2012 for the first of the three – the Ceremonies Programme - but we hope to create a funding guide to help all the partners and contributors we'll be working with in the other two sections.

We’re recruiting a Head of Culture to lead this process and a small team of cultural project managers to help drive it forward.

For the UK-wide Festival we're trying to establish a devolved structure which would see ideas and decisions derived closer to the audiences and creative communities.

Our consultation in the culture sector told us how important it would be for us to allow the right cultural projects to be able to use a London 2012 badge or logo.

This is more complicated than it might appear because of the high degree of protection that there has to be for any Olympic or Paralympic emblem or brand. However, we're working on it – we know what a priority it is, and before the summer we’re aiming to have a definitive answer.