London 2012 blog

I was delighted yesterday to be able to brief 500 members of the arts world on Legacy Trust UK's work with London 2012.

While we are not quite there yet in terms of being fully up and running, we are a newly formed Trust with a particular remit to help create and support cultural, sporting and arts-based activities in the run up to 2012 in order to ensure a lasting legacy throughout the UK, post the Games.

We will do this by making a small number of carefully targeted grants which will last for up to five years. We will work in close partnership with our funders, with LOCOG and with other relevant bodies to give ongoing support to the organisations we fund.

We particularly want to help them to leverage additional support to ensure that they become sustainable beyond 2012 when our job should be largely done.

Within our brief, we already encompass support for the UK Schools Games, being held this year in Coventry at the end of August.

In order to broaden our reach and balance our activity better, we are very keen to support a comparable cultural project at an early stage in our overall programme.

Our aim in working in partnership with LOCOG is to focus on activities which have the potential to become part of the Cultural Olympiad.

We want to enable existing organisations working in the youth, sporting and cultural/arts fields to come together to form a powerful team working with us and with LOCOG.

Over the years up to 2012, our joint energy and the Trust's funds will enable many more organisations, groups and individuals to become involved in creative expression celebrating the spirit of the Games and the values of the Cultural Olympiad.

Post 2012, we will work to ensure that funding continues and that there is a legacy that lives on celebrating friendship, solidarity and fair play.

We are working with our colleagues in LOCOG on the detailed brief for this first major cultural project which we hope to announce later in the summer.