London 2012 blog

Culture to me is an encapsulation of everything that makes us complete. The way that we sound, speak, relate to each other, eat. It excites me as in this enormously and increasingly complex world, these ciphers become important to understand and to share.

My love of culture is aligned to my own background, and my interests in making the society that we live in a more inclusive and understanding place.

For many years, as a practising artist, I worked in Carnival (Notting Hill, Leeds, Bristol and Trinidad). I was drawn to the spectacle and the feathers, the huge sound systems with their soul vibrating base bins, and the excitement on the street. I had always poured over Carnival images - wondering how these amazing creations moved and vibrated. I called them in my mind 'living sculptures'. I started making them.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the joyous experience of the creation of carnival. The mas camp is a rich place - full of all sorts who drop in for the thrill of participation. Designing for Carnival you have to learn the tricks not only of great design, but how these break into individual tasks for your multifarious work force. You had to have tasks for eager 10 year olds; for the glue gun enthusiast; for the philosophical engineer; for the painter; for musicians.

This space became such a precious hub of creativity - of fun, laughter and hard work. All the participants were un-paid volunteers, who offered their skills in the best way that they can - as they understand the whole model of carnival.

But I was most engaged in this process as that of shared creativity - and I began to understand that projects could be created in a way that brought people together, and could engage them at a very fundamental level.

Throughout my career, I have replicated this model of open creativity. Sometimes with more success than others. Once, on an opera project that I did for Opera North, I instigated a huge knitting project amongst older women.

To my horror, I discovered that the lead woman was painstakingly un-picking and re-knitting all the other women’s work if she felt that it didn’t come up to her expectations!

The carnival workspace also was also populated by women - and there was always a large component of black nurses. I began to understand the passion and belief that carnival represented to this grouping, of how valuable this making experience and communal activity was.

I also understood that it had little written about it; that many people didn’t know that it has a shape, functions, forms.

It made me aware that there are many cultural activities that remain outside the norm of finance, thinking and politics. So, carnival really bought two important cultural messages home for me.

Firstly that communal and cultural activity can be fun - but can be shared and directed. Secondly, that there were huge gaps of different cultural voices that remin unheard.

The further lesson in cultural expression also came into sharp focus for me because of my mother’s activities in the mosque. It was only via this institution that I came aware of group of people from Bosnia and Afghanistan. I remember particularly vast new groups of people attending the mosque. And in order to communicate, they brought their culture.

They bought in on steaming plates of food, deliciously rose petal flavoured sweets, different ways of communicating, speaking.

It was really stimulating learning in this gentle backseat observation. It made me aware that to learn truly about culture, you have to throw yourself in and absorb.

The Cultural Olympiad provides the opportunity for us to uncover such cultural activity and display it to the world, enabling everyone to immerse themselves in the excitement and diversity UK culture has to offer.