March 2009

Last week Jonathan Edwards was in the North East to launch a £1 million training and skills programme, Personal Best.

The pre-employment programme, which is being funded by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) North East through the European Social Fund (ESF), will provide training in volunteering for up to 1,000 people across Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham and the Tees Valley.

Targeted at unemployed people who have found it difficult to get into work, the programme offers a chance to gain qualifications and the possibility of volunteering at the London 2012 Games: graduates of the scheme are guaranteed an...

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This week we saw the first section of the roof lifted into place on the Aquatics Centre site.  Watch my video blog for a more in-depth look at how this has been achieved.

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Last week I went with the Planning Committee for a tour of the Olympic Park to see what progress was being made. It was good to see that it looked quite different from the last time we were there - most of the soil has been sorted and washed and a number of the buildings are beginning to take shape.

Inside the Olympic Stadium:

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In the week that our first major project for the Cultural Olympiad, Artists Taking the Lead, was launched, an interesting debate is taking place about the place of Culture in the Olympic movement and our role in the Cultural Olympiad in response to a blog by the Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins  

There are some interesting points of view already presented – I’ve added my own voice too, as have some of our Creative Programmers, who are seeing the effects of what we’re doing all over the country.  

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Watch this video about the start of construction on the Velodrome.

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I am the London 2012 coordinator at Carpenters Primary School in Stratford, the closest school to the Olympic Park site.



You might be wondering why I am sprinting across the imaginary finishing line of the Olympic Stadium track, wearing a helmet, goggles, gloves, visibility vest and heavy working boots. I can verify that they did slow me down immensely.

Being so close to the Olympic Park means that we see first hand the developments and how they will benefit the community. As a school we have taken an active role in supporting the London 2012...

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Today the British Olympic Association (BOA) CEO, Andy Hunt and Games Operations Director, Mark England made their first visit to the Olympic Village construction site.

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The London 2012 ‘Changing Places’ programme encourages volunteers to get out and transform their local area – improving the negative parts, celebrating the good.

We kicked it off at the end of last week with a clean-up day at Three Mills Island, next to the Olympic Park site. Find out more in our film.

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This has been a big week for London 2012's programme of local area improvements, with a change of name, a parliamentary reception, and an official launch!!

The week started with confirmation that the Local Environment Programme has replaced its names to the more engaging and less technical London 2012 'Changing Places' project. This was chosen following input both internally and externally from the programme's partners. 

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The planning had finally finished; we were finally ready for what promised to be a busy day with a number of activities in partnership with ODA, and a London 2012-themed 'Ideas Talk' at its centre. It was awarded the East's second London 2012 Inspire mark for a business event.

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For me it might have been the scary exhilaration of the Sex Pistols exploding onto the stage of a dodgy midlands club in the mid seventies. Or a few years earlier, as a reluctant boy soprano finding myself surfing along a precipitous musical wave with a triumphant chorus in Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Or perhaps it was the haunting eyes of the ship-born emigrants in Ford Maddox Brown’s “The Last of England” – one of the fine collection of Pre-Raphaelites that used to greet me in Birmingham’s Museum and Art Gallery. Much more recently The Sultan’s Elephant’s state visit to...

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…And we're looking for your school! Last month we announced our part in the Lloyds TSB National School Sport Week, which will see schools up and down the country being inspired by the vision and values of London 2012 to get more young people doing more sport.

It’s a chance for schools to really bring the Games to life in whatever activities they decide to do. Whether that's Inspiration to try a new sport, Equality – coming up with a new sport that gives extra 'goals' for teamwork or Determination – maybe to shatter a personal best on the track.

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See some of the highlights from our programme of archaeology within the Olympic Park.

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Just over a year on from the launch of the London 2012 Business Network the economic benefits generated by the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games speak for themselves.

Together the London Organising Committee (LOCOG) and Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) will procure contracts worth £6 billion and that means new jobs and new public investment in homes, infrastructure and sporting venues for the capital and the wider UK .
 
Contracts are going to a diverse group of firms. Some 98 per cent of London 2012 suppliers are UK based with around half based outside of London. Sectors involved...

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