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Cultural Olympiad is up and running
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent4 Sep 2008
Olympics chief and former athlete Sebastian Coe is to turn himself into a work of art.
He will kickstart the four-year Cultural Olympiad of arts events culminating in the 2012 London Games by joining the band of runners currently taking part in artist Martin Creed's Work No850 at Tate Britain.
Other athletes will join him in replacing the usual recruits who have contributed to the artwork by running through the gallery at regular intervals since July.
The special Olympics Hour will be a dramatic start to an Open Weekend of 500 events across the country.
The programme, from 26 - 28 September, will include the chance to see hidden treasures from the stores of the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum and the first performances - on the South Bank, the Barbican and the Artsdepot in Finchley - of a special youth choir formed for the Games.
Open Rehearsal, the Greater London Authority's annual invitation to the public to look behind the scenes of arts organisations from the Royal Opera to the Royal Court, has a special extended programme for the launch.
Four years of arts events, organised on the principles of the original Games that promoted culture alongside sporting prowess, will follow.
Details were being unveiled today by Lord Coe, chairman of Games organisers Locog, Jude Kelly, chairman of culture, ceremonies and education, and Bill Morris, the director of culture.
After concerns from the arts world about who would pay for the Olympiad, the team said £40 million had been earmarked so far. This includes £9 million committed last year by the Youth Music foundation and a £5 million contribution from the Government's Legacy Trust - set up to create a "legacy" for the 2012 Olympics.
Locog today announced an £8million contribution, having previously promised "modest" seed funding.
Organisers are beginning to supply the fine print to the arts commitments that were an official part of London's bid for the Games three years ago.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is entering an unprecedented collaboration with the Globe and the National Theatre to deliver the promised Shakespeare festival.
Twelve new works of public art will also be created across the country in a £7 million scheme called "artists taking the lead".
The programme of arts events will culminate in 2012 with a series of free performances at landmarks along the Thames.
Lord Coe said the eyes of the world were on London now. The intention was to create an Olympics under the principle of "Everyone's 2012", with the Cultural Olympiad being the first step. "We want it to include everyone and particularly reach out to young, creative people all over Britain and leave a human legacy of skills, confidence and stunning new talent," he was due to say.
"For artists and sports people alike, success often means staking everything on hopes and dreams and the determination to give your all towards lifelong goals.
"It takes commitment, training and grit, with years of preparation sometimes focused on a single event in the full glare of public judgment. Yet for those with the courage, there is no greater thrill and elation when it pays off."
The Olympics had shown the inspirational power of sport and that could be extended to culture, he said.
Reader views (5)
There's no xenophobia at work here, Nitin (I enjoy living in Waltham Forest, which is the Tower of Babel!): it's the issue of Funding v. Freedom. If you're trying to counteract the competitive nature of the Olympics, a worthy aim, what is Lord Coe doing in the photo? Has anything you've done so far needed his validation? There's a very dangerous culture developing that assumes anything worthwhile needs the equivalent of parental permission in the shape of public funding: there's now a whole Arts-Commissar bureaucracy to nurture this assumption, which does better out of it than most artists. I see this slow infantilisation as a kind of Soft Nazism.
I don't know your music, but I'm sure you've made your way so far without asking for subsidy. To the casual onlooker, the photo just looks manipulative (and ageist).
It's probably not your kind of thing, but for a contrast check out the London Handel Festival: first-class musical standards, and each year financed solely by the people who love Handel's music. More money might make for a glossier event, but something vital would be lost at the same time. Even worthwhile activities lose some integrity by the knowledge that someone else's money has been conscripted to pay for it.
If my earlier remarks seemed bitter, it's because my Council sacks museum curators, closes libraries, burns library books and steals funds aimed at the poorest in order to fund Olympic junkets.
- Mdj, Leyton, e10 london, 09/09/2008 00:23
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Let another gimmick!
- Caroline G, Essex, UK, 08/09/2008 23:23
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A friend forwarded this to me. I don't normally respond to these things but I was stunned by these comments.... As one of the people in the "gruesome" photo above, we were all asked to participate for good reasons. The whole point of the cultural olympiad for me is to counterbalance the competitive nature of the Olympics with the collaborative spirit of the arts. Unfortunately, the kind of arrogance and xenophobia presented in the comments so far indicates how far some people have yet to go before embracing the diverse makeup of our country....
- Nitin Sawhney, London, England, 08/09/2008 23:23
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Absolutely, Mdj! The pictured ensemble may be representative of a couple of London Boroughs, but certainly not of the real world that exists outside of the M25.
It is an absolute guarantee that, to the vast majority of Britons, this left-liberal dogma-fest will be of very limited appeal, save for idle curiosity.
- Keith Lonsdale, Doncaster, 08/09/2008 23:23
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A Cultural Olympiad is an idea better suited to North Korea than a democracy of free adults. Culture is what people get up to when they have choice over their actions, whether it be the conventional arts, sport or just sitting in the pub: it's got nothing to do with whatever the Government cajoles them into doing. People go to theatres and read books without Lord Coe's help most of the time: the fact that the government feels the need to cobble together this spurious event
( which typically has got my Council of slope-headed Stalinists really excited)shows a tacit recognition that no one really gives a stuff about the Olympics, especially when their pockets are being picked to pay for it.
The gruesome posed photo - couldn't they have got someone in a wheelchair to tick another box? Obviously no white male artist, or anyone over forty, could be included - looks like those Christmas group shots of all the rels who hate each other putting on big grins.
- Mdj, Leyton, e10 london, 08/09/2008 23:23
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