What should feature in the Cultural Olympiad?
Thursday night was music night for me this week. I was in the City of London to listen to the - an amazing collection of young people aged from nine to 16.
Close your eyes and the sound was of a well-drilled orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis. Open them and there was a small chap battling with a double bass that was about twice his size.
The Olympic connection was that this marked the start of the latest - which, in the official description, is about organisations and venues across the UK opening up and doing something different to celebrate art, culture and sport.
was on stage to launch the concert and to underline again that the London Olympics want to go beyond "just sport"; and certainly with the youth orchestra there's an instant connection with sports stars in the skill and the dedication they bring to what they do. It's all about performance.
The organisers hope the Open Weekend will involve hundreds of thousands of people across the country.
If you have a look at the it's certainly got variety, though some of the debate about this - and the Cultural Olympiad in general - has been about whether it's a bit too diffuse.
The case for the prosecution was made earlier this year by but since then there's been change.
It was announced last week that Tony Hall, once my boss when we were in 91Èȱ¬ News but now chief executive of the Royal Opera House, was to become chairman of a new Cultural Olympiad Board. The big arts bodies are coming on board, and we can expect the planning to move up a couple of gears.
Listening to the Barbican Youth Orchestra you can certainly spot the potential. Music is a matter of taste, and personally I could have happily lived without the percussion piece which opened the concert and had a touch more instead.
But if the UK has a range of fantastic concerts --- rock, pop, world music, classical --- in the run-up to the Olympics with stars from here and around the world then it could be a major contribution to the year feeling special. There are other plans afoot around art, film and theatre.
But this does come at a price - as shown by the announcement last week of .
Will it be money well spent? What do people really want to see and hear?
The British public will decide over the next three years, and the Open Weekend will give some indications of the current appetite.
I'm Roger Mosey, the 91Èȱ¬'s director of London 2012. That means I'm overseeing all the 91Èȱ¬'s 2012 preparations including not just sport but the Cultural Olympiad, our Olympic news and information services and everything that will bring the story of the London Games to audiences at home and abroad. I want to share here what we're planning - and debate some of the big issues. You can also follow me on .
Comment number 1.
At 24th Jul 2009, darkvalleysboy1978 wrote:This money would be better spent on training our pitiful athletes. When track & field competitors are ecstatic with making the final, then coming a distant 8th it's terrible. Yet the team of women rowers (sorry can't remember them) were expecting gold and devastated with silver. THAT is the attitude to have! These pitiful track & field athletes need to wake up and train harder. This money should instead go to training those who have potential to gain a gold medal such as Tom Daley
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Comment number 2.
At 24th Jul 2009, InColeraineHelp wrote:Take a sample of the tastes and thoughts of the young people THROUGHOUT the UK, I think the new Cultural Olympiad Board sounds a bit 'stuffy' to be honest and will not connect. Those kids that live outside the big metropolitan areas need to heard..........
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Comment number 3.
At 24th Jul 2009, freddawlanen wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 4.
At 24th Jul 2009, jiggery_opkery wrote:There was a World Mind Sports Games event in Beijing in 2008, taking chess, bridge, go and more as seriously as physical sports. Britain should fund such an event in 2012. If funding can't be made available to cover mind sports in the same way as physical ones, the event should certainly come under the purview of the Cultural Olympiad - not just an event with things to see and things to hear, but also things to play.
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Comment number 5.
At 24th Jul 2009, freddawlanen wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 6.
At 24th Jul 2009, ToonFalcon wrote:I have one major problem with the Olympics...........
When people come to Britain, do they come to see a folding double decker bus, a group of honorary chavs dancing in odd ways, or even our wildly eclectic mixture of decidedly odd people crossing a zebra crossing???????
Or do they come to our country to experience our CULTURE our hugely impressive or at the very least interesting HISTORY....???
What people forget, sorry i meant, what politicians forget is that whilst there are invariably bad bits throughout our history in some cases atrocious, yet our achievements are still what people think of when they think of England or GREAT Britain or even the United KINGDOM. The rest of the world looks at us as a nation which has achieved great things. We have clearly become less important on the world stage but why undermine those great men and women that gave our nation such respect....
Why modernise in such a vulgar way?? Surely this can easily be integrated into our history, something that the Chinese managed so well...
We are behaving like a nation ashamed of our truly incredible and proud history......... WHY????
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Comment number 7.
At 24th Jul 2009, Dmc1759 wrote:i think we should just make the entire ceremony austin powers themed....
can you just picture the opening ceremony?
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Comment number 8.
At 25th Jul 2009, Roger Mosey - 91Èȱ¬ Director, London 2012 wrote:Thanks for the comments.
Darkvalleysboy1978 in #1: there's that choice, yes. But is underfunding the issue in track and field?
InColeraineHelp in #2: it's a very good point. The Cultural Olympiad has to keep a UK focus, and we also need to make sure the Torch Relay gets to young people everywhere. If you're actually in Coleraine yourself, I was over in Northern Ireland a couple of weeks ago so it's firmly on our agenda.
Jiggery_pokery in #4: interesting - I'll pass that thought on.
ToonFalcon in #6: you've hit on one of the really big issues. How much are the Olympics and the ceremonies about our past and how much should they be about the present and future? The reassuring thing about 2012 is it should also be the year we mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee so there's no question that we'll be celebrating our history; but the mix of the Olympic ceremonies is an active debate already, and it'll be fascinating to see how it's resolved.
But Dmc1759 in #7: that sounds like an idea from Dr Evil?
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Comment number 9.
At 27th Jul 2009, DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:#7:
What a brilliant idea! Personally, I've always considered the nine billion quid (or whatever the final budget turns out to be) to be a huge waste of money, but it would all be worth it if your idea was taken up.
Mwahahahaha!
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Comment number 10.
At 2nd Sep 2009, whymandesign wrote:Who can I talk to in the 91Èȱ¬ about making the cultural Olympiad accessible to all? The 91Èȱ¬ and games would have to reach out and talk to the public in a way never done before if this was to be achieved any way near successfully. In the past people have tried and failed as they appear to have been to scared to let the public speak freely but now the internet is hear it is time for the games / 91Èȱ¬ to help the public show what they have to give (and have been giving) to the world (charity/coop...for starters).
And as the host country it is surely courtesy to let the visitors win. Otherwise that would be bad manners old boy (then we could use the funds to help stop people dying from hunger, water contamination or other diseases:).
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