- Getting Ready for the Games and Beyond - Boxing II
9 February 2010 - How To Tender: 39 Frequently Asked Questions
9 February 2010 - London 2012 Business event for Ely, Cambridgeshire
10 February 2010 - Business Awareness Workshop, Hereford
10 February 2010
London 2012 welcomes £16 million ‘National Lottery’ investment in Cultural Olympiad
15 Jul 2009
Tony Hall to Chair new board overseeing programme A major investment of nearly £16 million towards the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad has been announced today. The grant, from the Olympic Lottery Distributor, will fund six of London 2012’s Major Cultural Projects. They include an International Shakespeare Festival, a UK-wide film project for young people, and plans for World River, a spectacular Music Festival in London just before the 2012 Games.
LOCOG has also announced that Tony Hall, the Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House has been appointed to its Board of Directors and that he will Chair a new Cultural Olympiad Board as part of a new structure to oversee the programme going forward. He will also report to the Olympic Board and provide them with quarterly updates on progress.
Welcoming the investment, LOCOG’s Chairman, Sebastian Coe said: “We launched the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad last year, and have had great support from the cultural sector in the UK. This new investment means that all our Major Cultural Projects can now begin to plan for delivery with the vast majority of funding in place and we can move ahead to create exciting work which will enrich our Games, celebrating the UK’s cultural life and inspiring young people. It was our ambition that the Games would result in new investment to the UK’s creative industries so we are particularly grateful to the Olympic Lottery Distributor for helping to complete the architecture for the most wonderful cultural celebration for London 2012.”
Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said: "The Cultural Olympiad is an ambitious project which has already caught the imagination of the cultural and creative industries across the country. The investment from the Olympic Lottery Distributor and the establishment of the new Cultural Olympiad Board under the leadership of Tony Hall will drive the project forward using their talent and expertise to create a world-class festival which gives everybody the chance to celebrate Britain's rich culture."
Janet Paraskeva, Chair of the Olympic Lottery Distributor said: “Our aspiration is for London 2012 to be not just a festival of world class sport, but also a celebration of art and culture which will involve all of the United Kingdom and its diverse communities. This major National Lottery grant of £15.6m will help turn ambitious and exciting plans for the Cultural Olympiad into reality. Inevitably sport takes centre stage at the Olympic and Paralympic Games but London 2012 has the opportunity to put culture at the heart of our Games and to truly involve the whole nation whether they are people who love sport, music, theatre, heritage or film, whether they are able bodied or disabled.
We are particularly glad to be supporting the Cultural Olympiad because it will reach out across the UK and of course it is people all over the UK whose Lottery tickets are playing a major role in funding the Games. The Olympic Lottery Distributor is now the biggest single funder of the Cultural Olympiad and we believe that over the next three years London 2012 can bring art and culture to the centre of the Games like no Olympics before.”
Commenting on his new role Tony said: “I have always believed that the Olympic and Paralympic Games presents a fantastic opportunity for the arts in this country. We have the ability to introduce a whole new generation to arts and culture and show the world what a creative and inspirational country this is. I am looking forward to working with the LOCOG Board, the Government and Mayor’s Office and Bill Morris’s team at LOCOG to create something really exciting”
The current Chair of Culture, Ceremonies and Education at LOCOG, Jude Kelly will be a founder member of the new board and will help drive Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s vision of a united sport and cultural festival internationally, with a particular focus on developing the Cultural Olympiad legacy with the next Host City.
Sebastian Coe welcomed Tony Hall’s appointment and explained the developments, “Tony’s appointment to the LOCOG board reflects the importance of Cultural Olympiad to us and we welcome him aboard. The programme is delivered not by us, but in partnership and the creation of this new board will ensure that the vision we had during the bid will be delivered over the next three years – through those partnerships. We are hugely grateful to Jude Kelly for her fantastic contribution thus far. Her vision and energy throughout the bid and beyond, has ensured that culture is a core part of London 2012’s offering and legacy.
Ben Bradshaw, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport said: "We want our Cultural Olympiad to be the best the world has ever seen, inspiring and engaging people up and down the country. It's great that Tony Hall has come on board, bringing such a wealth of experience in broadcasting, production and the arts, and I very much welcome today's announcement of the funding boost from the Olympic Lottery Distributor."
London Mayor, Boris Johnson says: “The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are a once in a generation opportunity to stimulate the extraordinarily fertile creativity there is in London and throughout the UK.
This funding is a tremendous boost for the Cultural Olympiad, which will be an exciting shop window for our creative talent and for the cultural sector as a whole. A strong team will help ensure this happens, so I'm delighted that Tony Hall, with his energy and his ideas, has agreed to come on board.”
Jude Kelly commented: “I’m thrilled with this new funding for the Cultural Olympiad. This is a realisation of our long held ambition for 2012, working with the IOC, to successfully enshrine the cultural mission in the heart of the Games, to make it accessible to everyone and to hand that legacy on to other cities and future generations"
The new Cultural Olympiad Board is a joint initiative of LOCOG, the Government and the Mayor of London.
– Ends –
Notes to editors
The Olympic Lottery Distributor, (www.olympiclotterydistributor.org.uk) distributes National Lottery money in support of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The Cultural Olympiad
The Cultural Olympiad is a national celebration of culture which is happening now and is about:
Giving everyone in the country a chance to be part of London 2012
Putting culture at the heart of the Olympic Games, in a way and on a scale not done before
Using the power of the Olympic Games to inspire creativity across all forms of culture, especially amongst young people
Making a real impact which will leave a lasting legacy well beyond 2012
The Programme
The Cultural Olympiad has been running since September 2008 and has several different elements to it:
The Inspire Programme
The Inspire programme is open to non-commercial organisations which have vibrant, exceptional projects and events inspired by London 2012. Successful projects and events carry the Inspire Mark on their publicity material, are officially recognised as being part of London 2012 and will benefit from marketing and communications support, as well as exclusive networking opportunities.
More than 175 non-commercial projects – over 100 of which are now part of The Cultural Olympiad - have already been recognized with the Inspire Mark.
Cultural Olympiad Major Projects
All the Cultural Olympiad Major Projects are listed below, the first six of which have received OLD funding:
World Shakespeare Festival – The World Shakespeare Festival is an unprecedented celebration of Shakespeare in performance, led by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It celebrates Shakespeare as international property and the British as an international people and will focus on the relationship between the many communities of the world’s diaspora represented in the UK.
The central spine of the Festival will be a series of high-profile collaborative productions with UK theatre companies and their international counterparts from 10 Olympic nations and regions, commencing on Shakespeare’s Birthday, 23rd April 2012 for three months across three main hubs; Stratford-upon-Avon, Newcastle and London, where it will culminate just prior to the Games. Major UK partners already include the National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe.
The theme of collaboration will feed through into UK-wide participatory projects for amateur and community groups, young people and schools, which will develop from late 2009, with regional celebrations leading to performances in Stratford-upon-Avon in Spring/Summer 2012.
A Shakespeare programme involving the amateur and voluntary arts sector is being devised with the Voluntary Arts Network, to create new models of professional/amateur collaboration which share skills, encourage a mix of art forms and provide opportunities for increasing participation in the performance of Shakespeare. The celebration will bring an international dimension to the RSC’s schools network, activating youth participation through new networks.
World River - will welcome the world to London the weekend before the London 2012 Games with a spectacular two day free festival at iconic sites along the River Thames. A series of five performance sites, each representing the music and performing arts of a different continent will stage specially commissioned performances by world-class artists alongside young people and communities. Each of the 205 Olympic and Paralympic nations will be represented across the stages. Three years of participatory activity, developed with communities across the UK, will culminate in a spectacular weekend of music and performance, bringing the city alive and allowing Londoners and visitors alike to participate in the celebration of the Games. World River is part of the Sounds music project.
Film Nation – this project is run in partnership with the UK Film Council and others and will introduce young people to film, support them in developing social and film making skills, and provide opportunities to discover new and non-mainstream film. The project includes a UK wide film making competition for young people, an Olympic Schools film week and an international film festival in London prior to the Games. Film Nation will celebrate film’s ability to offer a window on the societies and cultures of the UK and will bring together young people across the UK with some of the world’s great film masters and a new generation of filmmakers who are still exploring the flexibility and interactivity made possible by digital technology.
Discovering Places - this project explores and showcases the historical, built and natural environment and landscape of the UK on a scale never seen before through a series of open days, participation and performance events from 2010 onwards at both iconic and undiscovered urban and rural sites across the UK. The project will culminate with a series of cultural events animating the route of the London 2012 Torch Relay and is managed in partnership with Heritage Link, with CABE, Natural England and the UK's World Heritage Sites all playing key roles.
Unlimited – will be the UK’s largest ever celebration of arts and disability culture and sport and will use the power of the Olympic and Paralympic games to profile the creative talents and ambitions of disabled people and to challenge traditional perceptions of disability. Unlimited will incorporate a series of major commissions for disabled artists and organisations as well as providing workshops, mentoring, career and training advice. It will also be developed internationally by the British Council, and will work with a consortium of arts, cultural and disability organisations across the UK to deliver an exciting and dynamic programme of events, festivals and showcases. LOCOG is developing Unlimited in partnership with the national Arts Councils'.
Carnival - this project will celebrate the raft of popular outdoor cultural work that spans street theatre, spectacle, circus skills and traditional and contemporary carnival forms in a series of events and festivals which will culminate in a world class street theatre commission in London in 2012. This project will play a key role in animating London and other UK cities during games time and before, helping to bring alive the streets of London and the UK in the run up to 2012 and further boost this flourishing sector.
Other Major Projects
Sounds - this major music programme will showcase and celebrate the sounds of the nation in 2012 and is led by the BBC. In addition to World River, the programme includes the creation by Youth Music of a national youth vocal ensemble and to be announced composing, singing and performance programmes in all forms of musical genre in collaboration with the BBC and other leading music producers and orchestras. Sounds will highlight the best musical talent in London and the UK and will be launched in Autumn 2009.
Artists Taking The Lead – an eight million pound project encouraging artists to use the nation as a blank canvas and showcase the UK’s creativity to the world. 12 major works of art celebrating 2012 will be commissioned from the 2000 artists across the UK who have already submitted applications for the project, which is run in partnership with Arts Council England and other national arts councils. The shortlisted artists will be announced in August and the winning commissions in October 2009.
Stories of the World - a series of 14 major exhibitions in over 50 leading museums, galleries and libraries across the UK, which will see the cultures of the world understood and interpreted in new ways. This project was launched in April 2009 and will involve young people of all backgrounds, from every part of the UK, becoming ‘curators’ of the collections and objects held in participating museums, libraries and archives.
Somewhereto - new spaces and places around the UK will be found and young people will be enabled to take advantage of the new opportunities this creates to practice their sport or hone their creative talent. This project is in partnership with Legacy Trust UK and will launch in early 2010.
London Festival – Arts Council England is developing ideas for a major arts festival to be held in London between January and July 2012, which will feature world class work in a variety of art forms from London’s leading arts and cultural organisations.
Open Weekend
Open Weekend is a mass participation event which gives people across the UK the opportunity to join in and try something new. Open Weekend invites arts and cultural organizations around the UK to open their doors to the public and challenge themselves to do something different and exciting. The first Open Weekend, held in September 2008, attracted 655 events staged by 421 organisations with over 750,000 visitors. Open Weekend this year is taking place on 24-26 July.
Who’s involved:
LOCOG works closely with the government and the Mayor of London along with a network of partner organizations such as the Arts Councils, BBC, MLA (London Museums Archives and Libraries), Regional Development Agencies and national and regional arts organizations.
BP is a Premiere Partner of The Cultural Olympiad and sponsors the ‘2012 Open Weekend’.
For further information please contact the London 2012 Press Office on +44 (0)203 2012 100 or visit the website. Find out the latest from London 2012 HQ on our blog.
As it heads towards its £2bn budget for staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games, LOCOG now has six domestic Tier One Partners - adidas, BP, British Airways, BT, EDF and Lloyds TSB. There are four domestic Tier Two Supporters – Adecco, Cadbury, Cisco and Deloitte. There are ten domestic Tier Three Suppliers and Providers – Airwave, Atkins, Boston Consulting Group, Crystal CG, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, Holiday Inn, McCann Worldgroup, The Nielsen Company, Populous and Trident.
The Worldwide Olympic Partners signed up for London 2012 are Coca-Cola, Acer, Atos Origin, GE, McDonald’s, Omega, Panasonic, Samsung and Visa.
Welcoming the investment, LOCOG’s Chairman, Sebastian Coe said: “We launched the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad last year, and have had great support from the cultural sector in the UK. This new investment means that all our Major Cultural Projects can now begin to plan for delivery with the vast majority of funding in place and we can move ahead to create exciting work which will enrich our Games, celebrating the UK’s cultural life and inspiring young people. It was our ambition that the Games would result in new investment to the UK’s creative industries so we are particularly grateful to the Olympic Lottery Distributor for helping to complete the architecture for the most wonderful cultural celebration for London 2012.”
Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said: "The Cultural Olympiad is an ambitious project which has already caught the imagination of the cultural and creative industries across the country. The investment from the Olympic Lottery Distributor and the establishment of the new Cultural Olympiad Board under the leadership of Tony Hall will drive the project forward using their talent and expertise to create a world-class festival which gives everybody the chance to celebrate Britain's rich culture."
Janet Paraskeva, Chair of the Olympic Lottery Distributor said: “Our aspiration is for London 2012 to be not just a festival of world class sport, but also a celebration of art and culture which will involve all of the United Kingdom and its diverse communities. This major National Lottery grant of £15.6m will help turn ambitious and exciting plans for the Cultural Olympiad into reality. Inevitably sport takes centre stage at the Olympic and Paralympic Games but London 2012 has the opportunity to put culture at the heart of our Games and to truly involve the whole nation whether they are people who love sport, music, theatre, heritage or film, whether they are able bodied or disabled.
We are particularly glad to be supporting the Cultural Olympiad because it will reach out across the UK and of course it is people all over the UK whose Lottery tickets are playing a major role in funding the Games. The Olympic Lottery Distributor is now the biggest single funder of the Cultural Olympiad and we believe that over the next three years London 2012 can bring art and culture to the centre of the Games like no Olympics before.”
Commenting on his new role Tony said: “I have always believed that the Olympic and Paralympic Games presents a fantastic opportunity for the arts in this country. We have the ability to introduce a whole new generation to arts and culture and show the world what a creative and inspirational country this is. I am looking forward to working with the LOCOG Board, the Government and Mayor’s Office and Bill Morris’s team at LOCOG to create something really exciting”
The current Chair of Culture, Ceremonies and Education at LOCOG, Jude Kelly will be a founder member of the new board and will help drive Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s vision of a united sport and cultural festival internationally, with a particular focus on developing the Cultural Olympiad legacy with the next Host City.
Sebastian Coe welcomed Tony Hall’s appointment and explained the developments, “Tony’s appointment to the LOCOG board reflects the importance of Cultural Olympiad to us and we welcome him aboard. The programme is delivered not by us, but in partnership and the creation of this new board will ensure that the vision we had during the bid will be delivered over the next three years – through those partnerships. We are hugely grateful to Jude Kelly for her fantastic contribution thus far. Her vision and energy throughout the bid and beyond, has ensured that culture is a core part of London 2012’s offering and legacy.
Ben Bradshaw, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport said: "We want our Cultural Olympiad to be the best the world has ever seen, inspiring and engaging people up and down the country. It's great that Tony Hall has come on board, bringing such a wealth of experience in broadcasting, production and the arts, and I very much welcome today's announcement of the funding boost from the Olympic Lottery Distributor."
London Mayor, Boris Johnson says: “The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are a once in a generation opportunity to stimulate the extraordinarily fertile creativity there is in London and throughout the UK.
This funding is a tremendous boost for the Cultural Olympiad, which will be an exciting shop window for our creative talent and for the cultural sector as a whole. A strong team will help ensure this happens, so I'm delighted that Tony Hall, with his energy and his ideas, has agreed to come on board.”
Jude Kelly commented: “I’m thrilled with this new funding for the Cultural Olympiad. This is a realisation of our long held ambition for 2012, working with the IOC, to successfully enshrine the cultural mission in the heart of the Games, to make it accessible to everyone and to hand that legacy on to other cities and future generations"
The new Cultural Olympiad Board is a joint initiative of LOCOG, the Government and the Mayor of London.
– Ends –
Notes to editors
The Olympic Lottery Distributor, (www.olympiclotterydistributor.org.uk) distributes National Lottery money in support of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The Cultural Olympiad
The Cultural Olympiad is a national celebration of culture which is happening now and is about:
Giving everyone in the country a chance to be part of London 2012
Putting culture at the heart of the Olympic Games, in a way and on a scale not done before
Using the power of the Olympic Games to inspire creativity across all forms of culture, especially amongst young people
Making a real impact which will leave a lasting legacy well beyond 2012
The Programme
The Cultural Olympiad has been running since September 2008 and has several different elements to it:
The Inspire Programme
The Inspire programme is open to non-commercial organisations which have vibrant, exceptional projects and events inspired by London 2012. Successful projects and events carry the Inspire Mark on their publicity material, are officially recognised as being part of London 2012 and will benefit from marketing and communications support, as well as exclusive networking opportunities.
More than 175 non-commercial projects – over 100 of which are now part of The Cultural Olympiad - have already been recognized with the Inspire Mark.
Cultural Olympiad Major Projects
All the Cultural Olympiad Major Projects are listed below, the first six of which have received OLD funding:
World Shakespeare Festival – The World Shakespeare Festival is an unprecedented celebration of Shakespeare in performance, led by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It celebrates Shakespeare as international property and the British as an international people and will focus on the relationship between the many communities of the world’s diaspora represented in the UK.
The central spine of the Festival will be a series of high-profile collaborative productions with UK theatre companies and their international counterparts from 10 Olympic nations and regions, commencing on Shakespeare’s Birthday, 23rd April 2012 for three months across three main hubs; Stratford-upon-Avon, Newcastle and London, where it will culminate just prior to the Games. Major UK partners already include the National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe.
The theme of collaboration will feed through into UK-wide participatory projects for amateur and community groups, young people and schools, which will develop from late 2009, with regional celebrations leading to performances in Stratford-upon-Avon in Spring/Summer 2012.
A Shakespeare programme involving the amateur and voluntary arts sector is being devised with the Voluntary Arts Network, to create new models of professional/amateur collaboration which share skills, encourage a mix of art forms and provide opportunities for increasing participation in the performance of Shakespeare. The celebration will bring an international dimension to the RSC’s schools network, activating youth participation through new networks.
World River - will welcome the world to London the weekend before the London 2012 Games with a spectacular two day free festival at iconic sites along the River Thames. A series of five performance sites, each representing the music and performing arts of a different continent will stage specially commissioned performances by world-class artists alongside young people and communities. Each of the 205 Olympic and Paralympic nations will be represented across the stages. Three years of participatory activity, developed with communities across the UK, will culminate in a spectacular weekend of music and performance, bringing the city alive and allowing Londoners and visitors alike to participate in the celebration of the Games. World River is part of the Sounds music project.
Film Nation – this project is run in partnership with the UK Film Council and others and will introduce young people to film, support them in developing social and film making skills, and provide opportunities to discover new and non-mainstream film. The project includes a UK wide film making competition for young people, an Olympic Schools film week and an international film festival in London prior to the Games. Film Nation will celebrate film’s ability to offer a window on the societies and cultures of the UK and will bring together young people across the UK with some of the world’s great film masters and a new generation of filmmakers who are still exploring the flexibility and interactivity made possible by digital technology.
Discovering Places - this project explores and showcases the historical, built and natural environment and landscape of the UK on a scale never seen before through a series of open days, participation and performance events from 2010 onwards at both iconic and undiscovered urban and rural sites across the UK. The project will culminate with a series of cultural events animating the route of the London 2012 Torch Relay and is managed in partnership with Heritage Link, with CABE, Natural England and the UK's World Heritage Sites all playing key roles.
Unlimited – will be the UK’s largest ever celebration of arts and disability culture and sport and will use the power of the Olympic and Paralympic games to profile the creative talents and ambitions of disabled people and to challenge traditional perceptions of disability. Unlimited will incorporate a series of major commissions for disabled artists and organisations as well as providing workshops, mentoring, career and training advice. It will also be developed internationally by the British Council, and will work with a consortium of arts, cultural and disability organisations across the UK to deliver an exciting and dynamic programme of events, festivals and showcases. LOCOG is developing Unlimited in partnership with the national Arts Councils'.
Carnival - this project will celebrate the raft of popular outdoor cultural work that spans street theatre, spectacle, circus skills and traditional and contemporary carnival forms in a series of events and festivals which will culminate in a world class street theatre commission in London in 2012. This project will play a key role in animating London and other UK cities during games time and before, helping to bring alive the streets of London and the UK in the run up to 2012 and further boost this flourishing sector.
Other Major Projects
Sounds - this major music programme will showcase and celebrate the sounds of the nation in 2012 and is led by the BBC. In addition to World River, the programme includes the creation by Youth Music of a national youth vocal ensemble and to be announced composing, singing and performance programmes in all forms of musical genre in collaboration with the BBC and other leading music producers and orchestras. Sounds will highlight the best musical talent in London and the UK and will be launched in Autumn 2009.
Artists Taking The Lead – an eight million pound project encouraging artists to use the nation as a blank canvas and showcase the UK’s creativity to the world. 12 major works of art celebrating 2012 will be commissioned from the 2000 artists across the UK who have already submitted applications for the project, which is run in partnership with Arts Council England and other national arts councils. The shortlisted artists will be announced in August and the winning commissions in October 2009.
Stories of the World - a series of 14 major exhibitions in over 50 leading museums, galleries and libraries across the UK, which will see the cultures of the world understood and interpreted in new ways. This project was launched in April 2009 and will involve young people of all backgrounds, from every part of the UK, becoming ‘curators’ of the collections and objects held in participating museums, libraries and archives.
Somewhereto - new spaces and places around the UK will be found and young people will be enabled to take advantage of the new opportunities this creates to practice their sport or hone their creative talent. This project is in partnership with Legacy Trust UK and will launch in early 2010.
London Festival – Arts Council England is developing ideas for a major arts festival to be held in London between January and July 2012, which will feature world class work in a variety of art forms from London’s leading arts and cultural organisations.
Open Weekend
Open Weekend is a mass participation event which gives people across the UK the opportunity to join in and try something new. Open Weekend invites arts and cultural organizations around the UK to open their doors to the public and challenge themselves to do something different and exciting. The first Open Weekend, held in September 2008, attracted 655 events staged by 421 organisations with over 750,000 visitors. Open Weekend this year is taking place on 24-26 July.
Who’s involved:
LOCOG works closely with the government and the Mayor of London along with a network of partner organizations such as the Arts Councils, BBC, MLA (London Museums Archives and Libraries), Regional Development Agencies and national and regional arts organizations.
BP is a Premiere Partner of The Cultural Olympiad and sponsors the ‘2012 Open Weekend’.
For further information please contact the London 2012 Press Office on +44 (0)203 2012 100 or visit the website. Find out the latest from London 2012 HQ on our blog.
As it heads towards its £2bn budget for staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games, LOCOG now has six domestic Tier One Partners - adidas, BP, British Airways, BT, EDF and Lloyds TSB. There are four domestic Tier Two Supporters – Adecco, Cadbury, Cisco and Deloitte. There are ten domestic Tier Three Suppliers and Providers – Airwave, Atkins, Boston Consulting Group, Crystal CG, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, Holiday Inn, McCann Worldgroup, The Nielsen Company, Populous and Trident.
The Worldwide Olympic Partners signed up for London 2012 are Coca-Cola, Acer, Atos Origin, GE, McDonald’s, Omega, Panasonic, Samsung and Visa.
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