Bill, Culture and Events Chief
A watery opening to the International Dance Festival
, 30 April 2008
Worse still this is a premier – we’re almost an hour into the very first night of Birmingham’s prestigious International Dance Festival. The city has invested significantly to build on its already strong reputation in dance. Heading towards 2012 and the Cultural Olympiad, Birmingham is set to stamp its mark around the world in this most athletic of art forms.
Minutes later, fidgety members of the audience look at each other in discomfort noticing that water is now seeping out, ominously from the back of the stage. A string of rivulets is advancing, and then coalescing towards the audience. Dancers are soon skidding, their costumes are dripping and the posh folk in the front row of the stalls are feeling the splashes.
I remember seeing the severe weather warning earlier in the day, but Birmingham’s Hippodrome Theatre has enjoyed a multi-million pound refurbishment. It is the spectacular home to the Birmingham Royal Ballet and surely they wouldn’t allow anything as simple as a leaky roof or dodgy plumbing to jeopardise such a night.
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That was just one of the emotions pulsing through me earlier today at the Torch Lighting Ceremony for the 2008 Olympic Games, here in Ancient Olympia. In the most exquisitely simple ceremony in the Temple of Hera, the rays of the spring sun are concentrated by a parabolic mirror to ignite the first Torch of the 2008 Olympic Relay. It’s a piece of theatre that draws its elements from the ancient Olympic Games which started here almost three thousand years ago – but in just four years time the same ceremony will fire up the London 2012 Games. So much to do, so much to learn and we’re next in the queue.
The Hellenic Olympic Committee mounts the Torch lighting ceremony for every Games. They couldn’t want for a better theatre, set or props. The ruins of the Temple of Hera sit in the most tranquil of settings; olive groves and majestic cypress trees punctuating the ruins of the most sophisticated athletics facilities in the world back in 600BC. Last summer’s forest fires devastated this region, but miraculously the scorched earth and wasted hillsides stop just at the edge of this ancient site.
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The Cultural Olympiad - be inspired
, 11 March 2008
The open nature of the programme and the new ‘Inspire mark’ are breaking new ground for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, as are the network of Creative Programmers all around the UK. It’s another important step towards making this everyone’s Games.
But this is all process, structure and construct. The philosophy of culture and creativity taking its place at the heart of London 2012 was there for all to see in the bid. The intellectual architecture was won in the values and vision for the Cultural Olympiad that emerged last summer. Now we have systems, criteria and brand mark to offer the hope of practical reality.
The truth is that all of this will come to naught without great content. Thankfully, as if to remind me of what we’ve been fighting for these last months, my diary over recent days has been brim full of it!
Getting down and dirty
, 22 February 2008
It happened amidst mountains of mud and dust. Double decker-sized trucks roaring past in all directions are groaning under the strain of thousands of tons of earth. As far as the eye can see, a wild moonscape of exposed, heaving ground.
We were bouncing around in the back of a 4x4 experiencing the Olympic and Paralympic future.
'You're on the 100 metres track right now,' said Lucy, our guide from the construction company, 'and we're just about to cross the Long Jump.' This is the London 2012 Olympic Stadium in Stratford and carved out of the ground the bowl of the main arena is already clearly visible.
Beijing to Hackney: it's cultural London
, 10 February 2008
Saturday afternoon, approaching three pm…“Close the gates – we're absolutely full”. It's one of London's premier venues so perhaps no surprise that there's still a huge crowd outside trying to get in.
Think again. This is the British Museum. Its towering old iron gates in front of the elegant forecourt aren’t often pressed into action as crowd barriers. It's the eve of Chinese New Year (we're welcoming the Year of the Rat) and the museum has programmed a mini Chinese Festival from morning until midnight. The centre piece continues to be its 'First Emperor' exhibition with unique access to The Terracotta Warriors. This alone has broken attendance records over recent months. But add to this Chinese crafts and food, mandarin story tellers, and the climax (for me at least), a concert performance of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewletts 'Monkey: Journey to the West'.
Premiering at last year's Manchester International Festival, 'Monkey' is a fantastical retelling of the Chinese monkey myth. Building on Albarn and Hewlett's famous collaboration on 'Gorillaz', it combines Albarn's music and Hewlett’s vivid animations. The museum's Great Court offered a dramatic arena for the performance and surely this most majestic of spaces can hardly have been more densely populated. And if you still thought London's museums are only populated with the white, middle classes from the Home Counties, you'd have been in for a shock.
From our own correspondent on the 9.53 near Runcorn…
, 13 January 2008
It was a controversial choice from the start, the city that came from behind to steal the gig from the favourite – years of rows over budgets and leadership – and is it just a flash in the pan or the driver for long term regeneration?
No – not what you think…I’ve been in Liverpool this weekend for the launch of its year as European Capital of Culture. And sitting on the train pulling out of Lime Street to travel south you can feel the waves of relief – it’s up and running at last and the weekend has gone pretty well.
Two conjoined set piece events marked the weekend. A free people’s spectacle on Friday night occupying the rooftops around St. George’s Hall, the Radio City Tower and Lime Street itself. The City’s brand new Echo Arena was christened the following night with “Liverpool – the Musical”. The same creative team built both and they were thematically linked.
After once dallying with an almost exclusively international programme for the year, the Culture Company chose, in these launch events, to explore and celebrate the cultural DNA that makes up quintessential scouse-land. With Phil Redmond (Brookside and Hollyoaks) now at the artistic tiller you can be sure that Liverpool’s indigenous talents and the tastes of real Liverpudlians won’t miss out. He’s fast becoming a “Geldof” figure around here – frank speaking, bold determinism and flowing locks to boot. He famously described the process of creating the Capital of Culture as a Scouse Wedding – a huge family bash that results in rows and fisticuffs and then everyone remembers what a great time they had.
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And the award goes to...
, 22 December 2007
However in this week’s LOCOG in-house review of the year, imagine my astonishment when I was feted as “Blogger of the Year”! Let me tell you it ranks amongst the great moments….
With the gushing tears of my acceptance speech still moist on my black tie, I now feel that conscience demands I put fingers to laptop one more time before the year ends.
All the world's a stage
, 1 November 2007
All the world’s a stage...In four and a half years the world’s biggest stage will be in London’s East End at Stratford when it hosts the 2012 Games. Tonight’s stage was also in Stratford, but in the less obvious location of the concourse of Stratford Station.
Right amongst the tube lines, the overgound trains and the Docklands Light Railway – with waves of commuters weaving their way home, ant-like - a most remarkable piece of live drama takes place.
A couple of hundred of us are perched on a generous balcony overlooking the modern concourse and we’re wired for sound with a track of ambient music in our headphones. Fragments of a conversation break through the music. Soon we realise that the protagonists are below us. Gary and Steve are hardly your standard theatrical heroes. Some kind of misfit street traders with a rich array of personal issues, they encounter a couple of potential punters out to score a major deal. The two city slickers are from the other end of town – polar opposites – high pressure, high value corporate lives. They start with every polished boardroom tactic to score the deal – subtle and silky smooth at first, but rapidly descending into desperation, abuse and total contempt for the non-compliant traders. Engrossing though this mini drama about the meeting of social strata is, the real theatre is all around them.
Culture and sport collide at the Great North Run
, 11 October 2007
The marriage of sport and art is a regular topic in our part of the 2012 Team. Perhaps that is why the Director of Culture, Ceremonies and Education found himself entered for the recent “Great North Run”. That’ll be me then!
There was the odd moment along the 13 mile course when this didn’t feel like such a good idea. At the eight miles point a man dressed as a 12ft tall daffodil overtook me with ease. At eleven miles, as the course winds its way from Gateshead to South Shields, the crafty race planners throw in a hill – not just any hill – the kind of hill that goes on for ever and has false brows. Like the mirage of a spa bath in the middle of the desert, each summit simply dissolves as a higher one appears over the horizon. Some people might be a tad embarrassed that a man in his late 70s finished half an hour before me. But then it was the amazing Christopher Chattaway (who broke the four minute mile in 1955).
Indeed as I gasped over the finishing line (in a gentlemanly two hours, six minutes) it might not have been the perfect moment to celebrate this as participation in a great cultural event – but after a hot shower, a rub down with the Radio Times and few days of achy calf muscles, I can now contemplate whether that is what it is.
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Sport gives hope in southern Africa
, 10 October 2007
Thomas is nineteen and he lives in a rural village in South Africa, not far from the border with Mozambique. He’s quietly spoken, a little shy at first and one of those will-o-the-wisp kind of lads who used all his growing in an upwards direction. But don’t underestimate this rather earnest young man – he’s a ground-breaker. That’s not just my view – it’s official – indeed it’s his job description.
As part of a leadership programme in South Africa and Mozambique I walk around his village – a rural township near the Mozambique boarder. There’s very little work here, and poverty is profound. The spectacular views towards the Kruger National Park probably don’t make up for the lack of electricity or basic sanitation. Most pressing of all, somewhere between twenty and thirty per cent of the community probably has HIV or AIDs. This isn’t uncommon in many areas of Southern Africa. It has been estimated that unless something dramatic can be done, half of South Africa’s current fifteen year olds will contract HIV or AIDS during their lifetime. Thomas is probably the village’s best hope.
Energy, creativity, passion: it's the PanAm Games
, 25 July 2007
The opening ceremony of the Pan American Games is the talk of the town – the talk of Brasil and much of the Americas. It managed to bounce the footballers out of the world famous Maracana stadium – a temple to the greats of Brasilian football.
Built in the 1950s, it was once the largest stadium in the world. Before it installed seats the old stadium could take 200,000 passionate Brasilian football fans – but I’m not sure I would have wanted to be right in the thick of it.
Now it has its PanAm carnivale costume on as a mere 100,000 people gathered for the opening ceremony of the 2007 Games. This wasn’t just a good show – it managed to capture the energy that drives Rio – the creativity that thrives in the favelas and the passion for life that’s obvious everywhere. Instead of high-tech wizardy and theatrical toys, this show drew on local talents, brilliantly choreographed (by Bryn Walters from the UK), and vividly costumed.
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Afroreggae in Rio
, 17 July 2007
Damian is a Brit who's been working in Rio for the last couple of years. He looks after international partnerships for the "Afroreggae" project which is doing astonishing work in the city’s many favelas, or shantytowns.
We're standing right next to another paradox. In the heart of one of the favelas we’re outside a police station – but you wouldn’t know it. The small breeze block shack looks like many others here except that it has a particularly colourful graffiti mural covering two of its walls.
A relaxed looking policeman is standing in the doorway smiling. Just fifty yards away down the narrow alley is a boy of no more than ten proudly brandishing his automatic rifle for all the world to see. Both apparently aware of the other – neither doing anything about it – for now.
Combatting poverty with culture: Rio
, 12 July 2007
The suspected fire in the hold turned out to be a suspect warning system, but the dramatic arrival was not a bad metaphor for a crash landing into this most dramatic of cities. Rio is hosting the Pan American games and clearly relishing the opportunity.
It’s a city of the most astonishing contrasts. Great wealth cheek by jaw with profound poverty – cutting edge technology and rapid development alongside the most laid-back-in-the sun beach life – sporting passions and cultural drive fueled from inspiration to live life beyond the vast “favelas” – or shanty communities.
Briefing on a marriage made in heaven
, 23 June 2007
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!
Delivering our promises
, 3 April 2007
Because of the unique nature of London's bid, we won the chance to engage the whole of the UK in a celebration of culture, education and sport across the four years from 2008 to 2012. Even more than that, we can use 2012 to help drive long term benefits to our cultural life.
It's now up to all of us in the cultural sector to rise to that challenge, and it's our job in London 2012 to enable and support colleagues in the culture industry as best we can.
Over the last six months, they have helped us hugely as we try to sort out some of the basics. Before the end of the summer (and we're probably looking at June), we’ll be ready to explain the many ways in which the Cultural Olympiad will work. For now I'm happy to offer a progress report.
After a UK-wide consultation with over 3,000 colleagues in the cultural sector, we have reached a strong consensus about the values that should lie at the heart of the Cultural Programme. These values create a firm foundation and clear identity and purpose for everything we do.
Making a fuss over culture
, 7 March 2007
8.15 in the morning is a bit early for the great and the good of the UK cultural sector (or any sector frankly) to gather outside London’s Tate Modern Gallery waiting to be seated in the cavernous Turbine Hall for a landmark speech by the Prime Minister about culture.
Why all the fuss? Well, no one there could remember the last time a serving Prime Minister had delivered a keynote speech solely on the subject of Culture and the Arts.
There were, of course, cynics who put this down to Tony Blair managing part of his legacy.
That’s too easy a hit. The reality is that his main theme, the success story that is the UK’s cultural sector, deserves to be told – indeed it's well worth shouting about.
Energy and passion at the IPC
, 6 February 2007
When the Berlin wall fell Bonn lost many of its Governmental tenants. It was lucky that one of the young organisations looking for a home shortly afterwards was the International Paralympic Committee. It is now housed in two specially adapted and accessible chateaux near the city centre.
The International Paralympic Committee may be younger and more modest in scale that its older brothers at the International Olympic Committee based in Lausanne, Switzerland, but it more than makes up for it in energy, passion and welcome.
Despite the rain, Doha is ignited by a flaming torch
, 1 December 2006
Heading off to the opening ceremony of the 15th Asian Games through flooded Doha streets (the capital city) was not on the carefully planned agenda. But who cares, the whole place – indeed the whole of the Middle East and much of Asia seems to be Games-crazy.
It may not hit the headlines too much back at home, but make no mistake - this is huge - and yet another reminder of the power of major games to energise and excite vast audiences.
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