On Monday, 4 June, I was called to the office of Ms Wiseman, my head teacher. It was fine – I was not in trouble, but what I did not realise was that it was going to be a special day.
Along with a group of young Ambassadors, I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the launch of the new London 2012 Olympic brand and logo, at Camden.
I, on behalf of all the Youth Ambassadors who went to Singapore with the bid team, made a pledge on stage in front of 400 people. Our pledge was: "Our generation will...
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Our fellow Host City, Vancouver, has released its sustainability report.
It is the first of five annual reports they will be preparing between now and 2010.
Interested? Read more on
Vancouver 2010's website.
Read more of “Vancouver 2010 sustainability launch”
With the judging of shortlisted teams in the VeloPark design competition taking place this week, we were delighted to welcome Olympic cycling champion Chris Hoy to our offices to join our design jury.
While Chris was in town, some LOCOG colleagues and myself met him for dinner. It's not often you get to have a meal with an Olympic Champion so we wasted no time in using the opportunity to grill him on his achievements to date, his plans for the future and the behind the scenes gossip from the cycling world.
Chris was fantastic company and gave us a fascinating insight...
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Earlier in the week, I was with the London 2012 Roadshow – which was visiting the Royal Norfolk Show, just outside of Norwich.
For anyone who has never visited their local county show – I would recommend it – from giant tractors, to giant tortoises there is genuinely something for everyone.
So it was the ideal setting for our Roadshow bus, which having braved the weather coming back from Scotland settled in for two days in Norfolk.
A lot of local kids were given the day off school – or came down with their school and the bus proved to be...
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This weekend I travelled with the 2012 Roadshow to the Outsider Festival in Rothiemurchus in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park near Aviemore.
This amazing location was to play host to three days of Music, Comedy, Film, and loads of sporting activity both on and off site, including the 2012 Roadshow.
Our pitch was set up late on the Friday evening and we were all waiting eagerly, ready to meet and greet festival goers first thing on the Saturday morning.
Much to my surprise it was sunny and relatively warm – I had been studying the...
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"It's not a launch!" I kept telling everyone in the office. "It's not a launch," I opined to ministers and mayors. "It's not a launch," I told the media - repeatedly!
But our briefing session to five hundred representatives of the cultural and creative sectors in the Royal Festival Hall was an important rite of passage as we build the Cultural Olympiad.
It wasn't a launch because the moment for grand public fanfares and announcements about individual concerts, exhibitions, events and projects is a long way off - the Cultural Olympiad doesn't start for another fourteen months!
Read more of “Briefing on a marriage made in heaven”
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...
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Today Bill Morris and the Culture team updated the arts sector on plans for the Cultural Olympiad.
Last month I wrote a piece for the Daily Telegraph explaining how culture and the Games fit together - it seems an appropriate time to add it to the blog:
"Denis Howell, one of our longest-serving and more colourful ministers for sport, mused some 30 years ago that he never saw a permanent secretary from Whitehall at a Cup final but could not go to the opera without falling over them.
Denis was of earthy Brummie stock and, although an unreconstructed municipal socialist, on...
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Day two of the Lincolnshire Show and the stand is busy again; lots of people signing up to the website and plenty of onlookers watching the new age curling competitions which is proving to be really popular.
The build up to the Roadshow has been pretty full on for three months now and I’m feeling really proud of everyone for making it all work so well.
We may be a bit biased but we really think the stand looks fantastic and there’s such a good atmosphere with the enthusiasm from kids spilling out and over on to the adults; it...
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I’ve always been keen on both walking and talking, so when the chance came up to act as a guide for Newham Council’s Walk the Olympic Park I jumped at it.
I also have a really strong connection with the Olympic Park site, since I used to live there.
It’s amazing to think that in five years time, the whole world will be watching the razzmatazz of the opening ceremony happening in what was once my back yard.
The walking group I belong to, the Newham Striders, has taken over 1,000 people on the guided walk round the Olympic Park, and it’s...
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When they first mentioned work experience at my school, my first reaction was, 'oh great, two weeks of wasting my time doing a boring job I will never want to do in the future', but then I thought about it again.
I thought, 'why not try and get a good placement'. And I did, the best placement in my school in fact - at the London 2012 Organising Committee (also known as 'LOCOG').
Arriving on my first day at the office in Canary Wharf was pretty daunting - being from the relatively quiet Stratford upon Avon, the contrast to London life...
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As the London 2012 Roadshow bus arrived in Lincolnshire, East Midlands, it was greeted by an ominous gathering of storm clouds and one of the most spectacular displays of thunder and lightning that the area has seen for some time.
Fears about soggy athletes and muddy sports displays were allayed however, as the day of the Lincolnshire County show dawned sunny and bright.
We got off to a great start with “MC Dougie” attracting visitors from all over the showground to get involved with the activities on offer, selflessly sacrificing his street-cred to take part in the dance routines and...
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Last Friday saw a team of 12 staff from the London 2012 Organising Committee taking part in 'London Better Together' day, volunteering their time to help out at William Morris Special School in Waltham Forest.
Meeting at Blackhorse Road station, a short bus ride took us to the school where we were confronted with our challenge for the day - a blank wall outside the front of the school.
The Student Council hoped that we could create a mosaic on the wall to welcome students, staff and visitors to the school each day.
It was then that we noticed that we had...
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Ben, volunteer, 18 June 2007
Last week I volunteered to help welcome the IOC to London for their inspection of plans for the 2012 Games.
I was helping as part of the 'PVP' ('Pre Volunteer Programme') pilot scheme, which I heard about through Age Concern Hackney and the Hackney Silver Surfers project - a computer training programme for Hackney residents aged 50+.
We arrived at North Greenwich Station and we were met by the coordinators and they explained what all the volunteers would be doing.
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A major focus of the archaeological work this week for Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS) and Pre-Construct Archaeology (PCA) has been directed towards the recording of the remains of a World War II anti-aircraft gun battery in the north-west of the Olympic Park, just east of the river Lea.
The spectacular survival was concealed beneath a couple of metres of soil dumped in the early 1970s. We knew these features were there as they appeared on earlier ariel photos and maps. Despite knowing that, nothing prepared us for quite how spectacular the remains were.
Two massive octagonal concrete bases were linked...
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Amid the new brand launch and before the IOC's visit to London I attended the IOC OGKM (Olympic Games Knowledge Management) 'Arrivals and Departures' workshop in Beijing.
The IOC invited LOCOG and VANOC (Vancouver 2010 Organising Committee) to join some 50 BOCOG staff at the workshop.
A&D will be particularly challenging for our Games because we designated five official “ports of arrival” (a very technical term in IOC speak) in our bid – Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and City Airports, together with Eurostar. Beijing, Vancouver, Turin and Athens will be or were predominantly single airport Games. I came away feeling better equipped...
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On Friday I was in South West Wales, visiting the Disability Wheelchair Spectacular at the National Indoor Arena in Cardiff.
We started the day off in Swansea at the South West Wales Chamber of Commerce Breakfast Briefing for Businesses where we talked about the opportunities for contracts from the Games.
It is really important that businesses across the UK understand that there will be lots of opportunities for them to compete for business.
I went straight from there to the Liberty Stadium, an amazing stadium that is home to Swansea City and Neath Ospreys. Here we participated in the Welsh Local Government...
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I came back from our brand launch late last night, a little the worse for wear, with a big smile on my face. I was, and remain, extremely proud of a first rate group of colleagues who have worked tirelessly for the past two months to stage a major event for two audiences of 700 key stakeholders and members of the world's media that went off without a hitch, to release a brand that wasn’t leaked despite intense media interest and to deliver a huge amount of physical and digital material to stakeholders, staff, the media, and partners faultlessly. The...
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