Cultural Olympiad
The Olympic Games and Paralympic Games are about more than sport. Host cities must also stage the Cultural Olympiad - a series of events to showcase the city's arts and culture to the rest of the world. For the first time ever, London has won the right for culture to play a central role in the 2012 Games.
The Cultural Olympiad will be will be a four-year celebration on a scale never before seen in Olympic and Paralympic history, designed to enable the widest range of people across the UK to take part.
London 2012 is opening up its culture programme as never before by inviting not-forprofit
organisations throughout London and the UK to submit ideas and projects for the Cultural Olympiad.
Selected projects will be able to use a new official badge, the London 2012 Inspire mark which is a first for any Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. Details will be released on 11 March about how cultural organisations can apply to take part. A team of Creative Programmers with people in every region of England and in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has been appointed to manage the process. The London 2012 Inspire mark will form a key part of the Games lasting legacy and will be awarded to innovative, non-commercial projects and events inspired by the Games across sport, culture, education, environment and volunteering . Each cultural organisation’s project will be evaluated and assessed, and can take place anytime between 25 August 2008 and 9 September 2012. Each project will be evaluated against three core values established last year for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
LOCOG and “Arts & Business” will be working together over the coming months to explain the opportunities offered by the new Inspire mark, as well as the guidelines for its use. A series of seminars and special meetings will be mounted in various parts of the UK.
The process of building up the programme will begin this year, with at least some events planned for this autumn, and then developing in pace and scale as 2012 becomes closer. Once established London 2012’s ambition is for the scheme to expand significantly over the four years towards 2012.
Culture will be at the heart of the London 2012 Games and the Cultural Olympiad will provide an opportunity to try something new, to encourage community involvement, to think differently about the Olympic Games and Paralympic