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Any Ideas For An Art And Cultural Olympiad?


taichi

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Although I'm not completely sure about Beijing's recent attempts, the Cultural Olympiad has usually been the first thing to suffer as venue costs rise - so I'm not really holding my breath for an amazing four-year festival in London (even though I may be involved in some way). Barcelona invested US$74 million in its Cultural Olympiad, whereas neither Atlanta nor Sydney managed to raise even half that amount.

For example, the Sydney Cultural Olympiad comprised of four separate themes, beginning with the Festival of Dreaming, which introduced new indigenous art by Aboriginal artists. That was followed by three other festivals; A Sea of Change focusing on exploration and immigration, Reaching the World about Australians on the five continents, and finally, The Harbour of Life which explored notions of life in Sydney. It was hoped that Sydney’s Cultural Olympiad would avoid being overshadowed by the sporting festival as had occurred in Atlanta. It was believed that it was a wonderful opportunity for Australia to showcase its arts to the world under the Olympic ‘umbrella’. The Festival of Dreaming enjoyed much success; it was Australia’s first major festival of Aboriginal art and involved over 700 indigenous artists playing to a largely non-indigenous audience while avoiding stereotypical views of Aboriginal life. The subsequent three festivals all failed to gain the same level of acclaim. Sizeable cuts in the budget after the first festival left the artistic directors with only half of what was originally promised in Sydney’s Olympic bid documents to the IOC some years before. The smaller budget being given to the cultural programme led to a reliance by the organising committees on street activities to provide much of Sydney’s cultural experience, particularly through the two weeks of the Summer Games (although this did have the positive result of involving the community). Nevertheless, the prevailing view of Sydney’s Cultural Olympiad was a negative one: the Aboriginal art festival was the only real success as it provided a much needed increase in profile for a neglected section of Australian society. Despite its failure to draw significant crowds at the time, elements of the Sea of Change festival remain an annual event in Sydney today.

At the moment there are plans for events such as a Shakespeare festival, an 'Olympic' style Proms festival and of course stuff involving youth and disabilities - while it's a good idea to tie the Cultural Olympiad to already popular events as the Proms and Shakespeare (in fact it may prove to be the one thing that makes it a success), I wonder where the cultural legacy will come from.

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I don’t think the legacy aspect of the London Olympics applies in the same way to culture as it does to sport

The cultural legacy will be inspirational more than any thing else

But I do think from what jude Kelly was saying that the idea is for the London cultural festival to be more prominent than in any other Olympics, and also the Tate Modern extension I think will be the Olympic extension.also the bigest art gallery in the world.

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The English culture is widely known to the world and there's nothing much to learn from it. The very unique way they could do better would be to focus on drama type of exhibitions than display of paintning and other works of art.

However, I can not underrate the English culturally.

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At the moment there are plans for events such as a Shakespeare festival, an 'Olympic' style Proms festival and of course stuff involving youth and disabilities - while it's a good idea to tie the Cultural Olympiad to already popular events as the Proms and Shakespeare (in fact it may prove to be the one thing that makes it a success), I wonder where the cultural legacy will come from.

Do you mean give the 2012 Proms season an Olympic theme or are you talking about a completely seperate, Proms-style festival? I haven't heard anything about this.

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