London 2012 blog

Yesterday London 2012 joined the Vaisakhi festival celebrations in Trafalgar Square. We set up a stand so we could discuss progress on the project and talk to Londoners - particularly in the Sikh community - on all aspects of the Games.

It was a wholly positive event. People were particularly interested in volunteering, the Cultural Festival that will run from 2008, progress on the Park and employment opportunities.

We had a constant flow of people during the day - all ages, from around the UK and across the world. Everyone was hugely enthusiastic.

We also enjoyed the some great cultural displays from the Sikh community - a highlight for me were the Dhol Drummers, who also performed at the London 2012 bid celebrations on 6 July 2005.

Read more of “Joining Sikh celebrations in the Square”

Well, it's been an exciting week for me; it was announced that I am to be part of the 'Design Jury' to decide the winning blueprint for the London 2012 Velopark, alongside such esteemed names such as Sir Nicholas Serota, Sunand Prasad (President Elect of the Royal Institute of British Architects) and Kathryn Moore (Past President of the Landscape Institute).

It's a huge honour and quite a responsibility too, but I'm really looking forward to being a small part of something that I'm sure will have a massive impact on cycling in this country.

In addition to this I've been knuckling down to some serious training for my attempt on the World 1000 metre record which will take place on 12 May in La Paz, Bolivia.

Reduced air resistance is the key to this track being so exceptionally fast (the current record was set there in 2001 by Arnaud Tournant and stands at 58.875secs) as the city sits 12,000 feet above sea level!

It will be a tough challenge to break the record as this location really is the only place on earth where it's feasible to go fast enough.

Read more of “Sitting on the design jury”

I have just returned from a trip to Beijing to attend the Sport Accord conference and visit our Colleagues at the Beijing 2008 Organising Committee (BOCOG).

After a ten hour flight, I headed out for dinner straight away with my equivalent at BOCOG - who to my great disappointment turned out to be a Manchester United supporter.

At dinner it was very striking that many of Beijing's senior team were women - something they have in common with us.

The aim of the dinner was to get help with our observer and secondee programme for the 2008 Games and talk to them about the Handover Ceremony at the Beijing Closing Ceremony. To this end our Head of Culture Bill Morris attended.

Read more of “Bicycling in Beijing”

I was invited to speak at a meeting at the London 2012 headquarters today to give a brief overview of the Paralympic Games to date.

So it was one of life's very nice surprises to find out that I was also there to see one of the meetings rooms had been named after me. It made me really proud.

I've been involved in every Paralympic Games from Tokyo 1964 onwards. Until 1988 we had to multi-sport, so I've competed in Swimming, Track, Table Tennis and ultimately became a fencer (when I was too old to compete and win as a Swimmer).

I was also captain of the first Women's Wheelchair Basketball team at the age of 41. My last Games was Barcelona, when I finished fourth and decided it was time to quit. But I still wanted to be involved and was Fencing team manager in 1996 and 2000.

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I accompanied Lord McKenzie, Minister in DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) with responsibility for health and safety, and the Chief Inspector of Construction Steve Williams, on a visit to the Olympic Park site yesterday.

For both it was their first opportunity to get some understanding of both the scale and complexity of what we are doing, and to see the level of commitment to ensuring the health and safety of everyone involved.

We began with a meeting in London 2012 HQ, Canary Wharf, where Simon Wright and I, supported by CLM colleagues, made a presentation.

With the new aerial video of the Park, it was easy to give them a good overview including our milestones to Beijing.

The health and safety aspects were of course discussed in some detail, as we explained our efforts to weave these considerations into all the design work now underway.

Read more of “Discussing health and safety with a Lord”

When the alarm went off at 7.30am on Sunday morning I was seriously regretting the decision to give up my lie-in to volunteer at this year’s London Marathon, particularly as my role would be as a very unglamorous baggage handler!

So what does a baggage handler do? We make sure that every bag left by runners at the start gets back to them when they cross the line. Each bag is numbered and put onto a lorry.

The lorries then drive to the finish where myself and about 500 other volunteers are waiting. There are about 15 volunteers allocated to each lorry and the first task was to sort the bags into numerical order (always quite stressful when you’re still half asleep on a Sunday morning!).

Read more of “Glamour and emotion: a Marathon volunteer”

The London 2012 security department joined the Metropolitan Police Service and members of the national press and media for the first public sighting of the Met's new "Special Operations Room" in Lambeth last Friday.

The room - known by police officers as "GT" - contains a range of specialist equipment (it already has access to over 10,000 CCTV cameras) and represents a huge step forward in the emergency services' capabilities.

"GT" was originally based in New Scotland Yard but the new facility enlarges its capacity by an extra 400%.

Read more of “A huge step forward for security”

I was very proud today, on behalf of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), to accept the Champion of the Earth Special Award from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as a recognition of the IOC’s work in the environmental field.

The IOC has taken the environmental concerns seriously since the early 1990s, when it created its Sport and Environment Commission.

The IOC has today incorporated all the basics of sustainable development, taking into account the environment, linked to social and economic benefits. This principle guides all our programmes and projects.

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Yesterday, I went with the rest of the Waltham Forest Youth Amabssadors to the London 2012 offices in Canary Wharf. We met Seb Coe, which was a great experience - he told us about upcoming events and the latest developments and we asked him about facilities in the capital, how older people can be involved and his main aims from the Games as Chair of LOCOG.

We took part in a workshop with London 2012 education officers and gave our opinions on how we think young people and schools should be involved in the Games, which I hope they will listen to.

Read more of “Giving our views to Seb Coe”

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.

Read more of “Delivering our promises”

Plans for the London 2012 Education Programme are developing fast and we want to make sure that the whole experience is as exciting, relevant and inspiring to young people as possible.

To help us make sure that our plans are on the right track, we invited a group of head teachers, teachers and pupils to come along to a workshop at our offices last week and talk about some of our ideas.

I was lucky enough to run the workshop for young people – you can normally rely on them to be totally honest, and they always have the best ideas!

It certainly wasn't a disappointment: everyone was really enthusiastic about our ideas and offered plenty of suggestions to make them even better.

It was fantastic to meet such articulate and clear-thinking young people. Watch out, everyone: these guys will be after our jobs in a few years!

Read more of “Education, education, education”

Can we help the growing creative industries fulfill their potential through hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games?

There seems to be a natural fit between the work of companies from the street arts, circus and carnival sectors and the desire to have strong visual and performance presence around the Games.

LOCOG are examining whether these types of companies would want to use other areas of the park as rehearsal and public performance spaces in the future, contributing to the character of the park post-2012 and, perhaps, resulting in the creation of a national centre of excellence in these sectors.

We’re currently researching a range of options that might offer cultural (and associated) legacies in the Olympic Park after the 2012 games.

One such is a “Creation Space” to take over one of the buildings (or part of a building) on the site after the Games itself to be used as production and rehearsal space.

Read more of “Creating a cultural space after 2012”