Discussing ideas for the Opening Ceremony

I attended the meeting held in Brighton to discuss the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. Along with the eight other artists there and the members of the London 2012 Ceremonies team I felt it an immense privilege to be at the table and included in the discussion. It was fascinating to realise how commonly felt the main feelings associated with previous Opening Ceremonies were.

These were varied but included for most of us both a sense of wonderment and a hugely warm, emotional response, coupled with a general revulsion towards the feeling of being manipulated and an overriding sense that so much money being spent on any celebration is somewhat distasteful.

The statistics though are uncompromising – what is being created is 'the greatest show on earth' – when over a quarter of the total population of the world are your audience; you better make something that works.

So here's the real problem – when your audience is so big (both the 80,000 live audience and millions deep tv/internet audience) who do you aim the show at? As artists we are used to defining the audience for a piece of work, either creating wok specifically for a particular audience or realising who the audience will be through the creative process.

But Martin (Head of Ceremonies at London 2012) and the team have a different challenge – they have to satisfy everyone, and everyone is a big range of views and tastes – from the Londoners who are watching their Olympic Ceremony, to the athletes who are watching theirs and the great masses who are watching theirs. It is in fact an impossible task.

Another clear decision must be made not to enter the competition between nations of creating the biggest ceremony. Global economics alone dictate that the critics will be assessing the legacy of the ceremony along with the rest of the Games, and will want to see sustainable spending even in this department – and quite rightly. As if this wasn't enough of a reason any attempt to take on the Beijing Opening Ceremony in terms of scale will lose – you cannot get bigger than what they did.

But what did they miss? Intimacy, authenticity of action, participation – these were some of the words that re-appeared and focused areas of our discussion.

What we were left with was a surety that the team behind the ceremonies are aware of the scale of the challenge and capable of producing something that will work. Perhaps more reassuringly, for me at least, was the feeling that this is a group of people who will maintain their own artistic sensibility throughout.

They will have to make sure, as all artists must, that they firstly respect their own integrity and carry it through to every area of the work. In producing a piece of work that they love, they will create something that we all love too.