London 2012 blog

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Last week I attended the opening of a new station from our delivery partner, Docklands Light Railway (DLR), at Langdon Park. Located between the All Saints and Devons Road stations, this £7.5 million facility will give thousands of local people in Tower Hamlets better connectivity to London’s public transport system. Just 10 minutes from Stratford Regional Station, Langdon Park will also provide spectators with a great link to the action at the Olympic Park in 2012.

Langdon Park station:



The local community helped design the station and the school next door hosted the opening ceremony. Mayors, councillors, funders and the school’s headmaster all took part in what truly seemed a prime example of successful community collaboration. A unique flagstone plaza leads from the station towards the school.

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Last week I was pleased to be invited to be a guest judge at the London School of Economics. Students studying for a Masters in Human Resources had been set a group task of devising a HR strategy for the London 2012 Games and they had to present their strategy to the group. 

Listening to the presentations it was clear that a great deal of research, thinking and rehearsing had gone into their work and that the six teams were all eager to do well - particularly as the prizes were chocolates!

I was extremely impressed with the hard work the students had put into their presentations, and the thing that struck me most was how enthusiastic they were about the 2012 Games.

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Today marks 100 days since I joined the Olympic Delivery Authority and what a 100 days it has been.

When I joined the ODA as Chairman in September this year the work on the Olympic Park was just beginning to accelerate - almost a third of the Olympic Park had been cleared, with over 40 buildings demolished.

100 days later and I have seen significant progress made on site – demolition work is well over the halfway stage and the clean up of the site well underway, with previously contaminated ground being cleaned and reused on site.

We have also hit other key milestones in the project during this time including the unveiling of our innovative, world-class Olympic Stadium designs, and the publication of the first full version of the Olympic Transport Plan.

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I started working at LOCOG a month ago as project manager on ‘Welcoming the World’.  I know, it sounds like a big responsibility. 

While it’s inspired by a big idea - of showcasing the uniqueness of East London to the rest of the world - it’s actually a film and photography project involving 20 schools in the five Host Boroughs of Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. 

Welcoming the World is the first education project we’re launching, to coincide with the start of the Cultural Olympiad in 2008. At the end of the Beijing Olympic Games and Paralympic Games there will be formal Handover Ceremonies in which the Mayor of Beijing will present the Olympic flags to the Mayor of London. These will be the moments when the eyes of the world will turn to London and the lead up to the London 2012 Games will begin.

In Welcoming the World, we’re asking young people to consider what they would like the world to see from their local area, and providing an opportunity for communities to be part of the Games experience.  

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Yesterday I saw more evidence yesterday of people's dedication to helping people achieve their dreams on my tour of the West Midlands - part of London 2012's Nations and Regions programme.

I opened a new athletics track at Aldersley Leisure Village, where I won my first AAA Youth Championship.

I also spoke at a sports participation conference in Telford, and visited Sundorne school in Shrewsbury - a specialist sports college who are working on a range of initiatives to encourage their students to both participate in sport and to have healthy meals at school.

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Last week children from the Waterden Crescent Travellers’ community were the first to attend the Olympic Delivery Authority’s new health and safety initiative - ‘Don’t Go There!’ - a play and workshop about staying safe near construction sites.

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The London 2012 Education briefing last Thursday was an amazing experience to be involved in, not least from an artwork perspective. It was great to see how things developed from our initial meeting with the Education team at London 2012 through to the actual day. 

The presentation of the artwork looked fantastic. And hearing the speakers deliver their presentations was very insightful - particularly the Youth Ambassador, Jasmine Scott who at 17 can certainly entrance a room and capture her audience. She did a fantastic job and I wondered, as I stood listening, if maybe one day she'll be Prime Minister!!

The buzz of discussion and ideas which permeated the room was delightful to witness and I certainly left feeling inspired for what is going to develop within schools, colleges and universities. There will undoubtedly be a knock-on effect as the students the Education Programme reaches enter society.  Imagine it - a city of inspired youth.

Hi, I’m Tom ‘Danger’ Dickinson. I’m a Graphic Design student . I’m in the final year of my degree now and I’m currently working on my entries for next years D and AD and YCN design competitions. It’s stressful stuff, but provides a good distraction from writing my dissertation. I’m particularly interested in motion graphics and filmmaking.

I was asked to take part in an exhibition and showcase of LOCOG’s new education initiative for young people. I received a mysterious message to collect a design brief from the 22nd floor of a skyscraper in Canary Wharf. Needless to say, this was exiting stuff, and the brief was even better. My partner in design for this project, Gavin Day and I went on to make a sound and print installation for the entrance to the exhibition space, hidden behind Carnaby Street in London. It was based around the theme of citizenship.

We asked all kinds of people across London, from as many races, religions, ages or nationalities as possible, if we could record them saying the word citizenship in their indigenous language and to describe what the word meant to them in their lives in London and the UK.

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Each year, as part of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards, the BBC runs a competition to find a Sports Unsung Hero. It gave me great pleasure to be an ambassador for the Unsung Hero award this year. When I was asked who my own personal Unsung Hero is, I replied my father - he navigated me through the early years and nurtured my teenage talent from junior domestic successes through to international competition and ultimately, two Olympic Games and world records. 

Margaret Simons, the founder of Bardwell Football Club in Bicester, Oxfordshire, was picked from 15 regional winners as the BBC Sport Unsung Hero at the awards last night:

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The chance to visit the newly reopened London Transport Museum in Covent Garden powerfully reminded me just how public transport has helped shape the city of London and indeed our transport plans for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

It was the Victorians who sorted out the fundamentals. Firstly, it was the national railway network, followed by specific London transport modes, such as middle-class horse buses, working-class horse trams and underground railways.

The Edwardians then invested in the deeper level tube lines, which 100 years on, have given us a 408km-long tube network that serves 275 stations! The tube will help get the 80 per cent of Games spectators who are expected to travel by rail to the Games.

And yes, 'motor buses' have replaced 'horse buses' and also the trolleybuses, which were electric buses that were powered by two overhead wires and would have been used during the 1948 Olympic Games.

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Yesterday, the LOCOG Education team hosted a briefing for the Education sector. This was our first chance to share our plans for the London 2012 Education Programme and to explain what we’ve been doing for the last few months.

We were joined at the Vinyl Factory Gallery in Soho by an audience including Government, sponsors and members of the Olympic and Paralympic Families. The venue had been dressed by students from the London College of Fashion and the Chelsea College of Art and Design - they spent the few weeks leading up to the event coming up with ideas for how they could use photography, artwork, sound installations, stickers and even hopscotch to dress the venue and they did a fantastic job. The event was also broadcast live via webcast to a further 100 stakeholders from around the world.

This was our first chance to share our plans with all of our stakeholders. We have met with many of them over the last few months to share ideas, agree strategies and objectives and align our thinking but this was our first opportunity to present all of our plans in one place.

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I did a lot of sport in my childhood, but was always drawn to acting. That was my real passion and my only dream. My life was changed greatly with a passage to Moscow at the age of fourteen. From acting, I moved on to fashion, which has now led me to London – a youthful and vibrant capital city.

I have just completed a BA in Fashion Design and Technology at the University of the Arts London, and my institution became my link to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, where I worked on a design project for the education team's briefing yesterday.

Now I have graduated I have stepped into a new phase of my life. I am at the stage of defining who I am. Working with London 2012 and learning about their values and vision for the future has forced me to think about my own artistic and spiritual paths. 

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We defined the 2012 vision with young people at the very outset. We wanted to demonstrate that young people are at the very essence of the Games. We invited 30 young people from the five Host Boroughs to Singapore in 2005 not only to demonstrate our commitment to involving children and young people in 2012 but also because we hoped that it would have a positive impact on them and would help to raise their aspirations as individuals, opening their eyes to the possible opportunities out there for them. We trusted them to represent what is great about London and the UK. This demonstrates that not only do we want young people to receive our education offer but to be part of it and help to shape it over the four years.

That’s what we want from 2012 – for every child and young person to raise their aspirations and fulfil their potential – whatever their interest or chosen pathway. 

2012 might also help to raise their aspirations and inspire them through other areas – we want the young dancer, the aspiring journalist, the talented chemist, the ambitious electrician to all have the opportunity to use the Games to help them achieve their goals.

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Our ambition is for London 2012 to use the power of the Games to inspire change by delivering a memorable Games that provide experiences of a lifetime, capturing the imagination of young people all over the world, and by creating physical, social and sporting legacies that meet the long term needs of people and their communities.

We want to use education and learning to maximise children’s and young peoples engagement, with the London 2012 Games, inspiring them and helping them to fulfill their potential.

When considering how we are going to achieve this we kept coming back to the Olympic and Paralympic Values:

- Respect - or how to use fair play, knowing one’s own limits, taking care of one’s health and the environment.

- Personal Excellence - or how to give the best of oneself, on the field of play or in life; taking part and progressing according to one’s own objectives.

- Friendship - or how, through sport, to understand each other despite differences.

And there are the Paralympic Values of Courage, Determination, Inspiration and Equality. When you look at the values there is a breadth of activities that respond to progression in ones own objectives to achieve their own personal best.

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This year has been so busy but I’ve had an incredible time. It started at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in January, where I managed to win Gold on Pommel Horse and prove that I’m still a good all rounder on the other 5 apparatus. We had some Grand Prix events in Moscow, Belgium, and Paris and I made some more finals before flying to Amsterdam to compete in my first ever Senior Europeans event. I was happy to make top 8 on Pommels with one of my best routines, although a few small errors put me in 4th overall - still good and very happy to see Dan Keatings from Huntingdon take Silver in the same event - We have an AWESOME team here.

In March I was proud to be part of the launch of the first London 2012 partner, Lloyds TSB, performing with other gymnasts…in the company of a beautiful black horse!

Me on my own horse:

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On 24th and 25th November the IPC held the General Assembly (GA) of nations, regions, sports and international disability sports organizations in Seoul Korea the country where historically the modern Paralympic Games came of age in 1988 with the first extensive use of the Olympic facilities. Nearly 100 members attended, a record for a GA. There were a number of resolutions, of which the one concerning athletes with an intellectual disability is key for London 2012.

In short, at the Sydney 2000 Games two able-bodied reporters managed to infiltrate the gold medal-winning intellectually disabled basketball team. As a result, athletes with an intellectual disability were suspended from Paralympic Games and IPC championships. Seven years of discussion and research had not yielded a solution.

But at the GA a motion presented to the Assembly by Iceland and strengthened by an amendment from the British Paralympic Association provided an opportunity to see those athletes re-admitted for the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

Read more of “A positive step for change at the IPC”

Last Wednesday and Thursday was the annual Thames Gateway Forum. After a two day build of the stand, and a large courier van to take all our information to the venue, we were almost ready to begin. An early start to get all the brochures and model in position and test the speakers presentations before the exhibition opened we were now ready for them to open the doors.

The forum is a chance for all the companies that are involved in the area to tell their success stories, and those that want to be involved to come and find out how they can be. The ODA had an impressive stand with all the brand colours bringing it alive.

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