London 2012 blog

More beautiful weather in the East End. So what better way to enjoy the evening than by visiting one of the 2012 indoor venues? But this one is rather special: the completely renovated and rejuvenated Dome.

And we even had a project alum giving us the tour in the shape of our former Director of Marketing and Sponsorship, now Chief Exec of the Dome, Phil Beard.

Now I’m sure there are lots of people out there who would love to work on the 2012 Games and very few who would relinquish that opportunity should it arise. So why would someone leave?

I can’t help feeling Phil might have several answers to this: “to put on Bon Jovi’s first indoor performance in 17 years”; “to put on the biggest female recording artist of all time, Barbara Streisand”; “to put on perhaps the last tour ever by the Rolling Stones”; or, to use some sporting themes, “to put on the first regular season NHL and NBA games in the UK”; “to put on Britain’s brightest boxing sensation and Olympic medallist, Amir Khan”; or some other cultural themes, “to put on the first Tutankhamun exhibition in London since 1972”.

I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s going to be unlike anything we’ve seen before in the UK.

I'm sure you'll agree, it's going to be unlike anything we’ve seen before in the UK.

And that’s before you consider the other venues inside the unique structure: the 11 screen cinema with the nearly 800 seater screen for premieres; the range of restaurants from the traditional to the more bespoke (e.g. a Gary Rhodes restaurant); the shopping parade longer than Bond Street. The scale of the venue and the scale of the ambition are clearly immense and it promises to be a cracking venue for our gymnasts and basketballers in 2012.

In the meantime, we wish Phil, Mitch and Sarah (the other two 2012 alums who are now working on the programme) all the best with the launch and I highly recommend you book some tickets to an event soon – if the shows announced so far are anything to go by, you’ll have to be quick.



Inside the Dome



The team with Phil Beard



The Dome in the sun