London 2012 blog

For the ODA Arts and Cultural Strategy team, the last two weeks have been the most exhausting, exciting and testing time since we arrived in February this year. For me in particular this was an opportunity to get some more hands-on experience of running an arts commission.

After advertising for expressions of interest in July in a variety of networks, websites and the London 2012 Business Network, we invited artists to submit ideas for 12 bridges and up to 5 underpasses in the Olympic Park to provide a lasting memory of the Olympic Games and the history of the Park. My involvement as coordinator of the Arts and Culture Strategy team was to manage the commission process and programme the involvement of an artist into the construction programme of the bridges.

The deadline for expressions of interest was Friday 1 August and in the few days before this, we waited nervously to see what would appear in the ArtCommissions inbox. Slightly concerned that we had only received about 20 or so submissions, our fears were dispelled and our expectations exceeded by the end of 1 August when the inbox showed an overwhelming response of 250 emails. Local, national and international artists, designers, craftspeople and architects flooded into the inbox by 5pm and we were delighted that this commission opportunity had caused so much interest from such diverse areas of the art sector.

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At the end of June the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) took part in a jointly organised event with British Waterways to celebrate the London Festival of Architecture (LFA), which took place from 20 June to 20 July 2008. This year's festival focus for east London was Canary Wharf, Stratford and Greenwich Peninsular.

I was asked to take this forward and find a suitable event which would achieve a lasting association with the festival. The result was an event which involved a winning combination of boats, water, London 2012, a history of canals and rivers and, fortunately, sunshine last month.

Over the course of the weekend, trips on the 'Jenny Wren' canal boat took passengers from Limehouse Lock up the Limehouse Cut to the River Lea Navigation and stopped at Old Ford Lock to allow people to walk onto the Greenway and see the Olympic Stadium construction site. ODA volunteers joined forces with Richard Rutter, Mark Bensted and Jeremy Batch from British Waterways to take passengers on a magical tour of the London 2012 Games, the history of the Limehouse cut and River Lea navigation.

The Jenny Wren (image courtesy of British Waterways):

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