London 2012 Cultural Olympiad

2 SCOTLAND’S LONDON 2012 CULTURAL PROGRAMME IN CONTEXT

London 2012 Cultural Olympiad

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2.4 In the London 2012 bid document, organisers stressed their commitment to reach out to the whole of the UK with their cultural offer. The resulting London 2012 Cultural Olympiad was the first to have a national rather than a solely city-based remit. Responsibility for planning and delivery was split across a range of organisations including the London Organising Committee for the Games (LOCOG), government departments, non-departmental public bodies and a range of cultural agencies and organisations.

The objectives of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad were to:

- inspire and involve the widest range of London and UK-wide communities; - generate sustainable long-term benefits to our cultural life; - create outstanding moments of creative excellence across the full range of performing arts and creative industries; - connect future generations with the UK’s artistic communities and with their peers around the world; - promote contemporary London as a major world cultural capital; - drive tourism and inward investment and use the creative industries to boost economic regeneration; and - embrace the Olympic movement values of “excellence, respect and friendship” and the Paralympic movement vision to “empower, achieve, inspire”. 1

In the delivery of these objectives, the Cultural Olympiad developed major projects across the UK. These included Unlimited, Somewhereto and Artists Taking the Lead. These projects had a diverse range of funders, including Legacy Trust UK (LTUK) which also funded region-led projects (e.g. the Scottish Project). Launched in 2008, LTUK invested £40million in four national projects and 12 regional projects, including in excess of £3million for The Scottish Project alone. Non-commercial Games-related cultural activity had the opportunity to use a specially designed brand, ‘Inspired by 2012’ (Inspire Mark) to recognise their excellence.

Thirteen Creative Programmers were recruited, one from each of the UK Nations and Regions, acting as ‘parallel coordination structure, liaising with, but not dependent on, LOCOG’ and to ensure more ‘locally sensitive cultural programming’.2 The creative programmer role, though different in each area, involved crafting, curating and, ultimately, producing a London 2012 cultural programme within their nation or region. Scotland’s Creative Programmer was hosted within Creative Scotland, the national development agency for the arts, screen and creative industries and was supported by a team of people from across the artform specialisms within Creative Scotland’s The London 2012-Glasgow 2014 team has subsequently hosted information sessions to promote the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme and participated in assessment of applications for this fund.

London 2012 Festival

2.5 The London 2012 Festival offered a distinctive curated culmination to the cultural programme for the 2012 Games. It was devised to raise the profile of the cultural offer over the course of 12 weeks leading up to, during and after Games-time and to echo the scale, energy and quality of the sporting programme. The emphasis was on artistic excellence, a world-class programme and wide ranging exposure.

1 LOCOG (2007, p. 4) 2 Garcia (2012: 30).