The Olympics and the Paralympics are not just about sport.

The original vision of Pierre de Coubertin, the man responsible for reviving the Olympic ideal in the late nineteenth century, sought to realise the marriage of sport and the arts.

An arena in which everyone, whatever their talent or skill, is given the opportunity to strive for excellence.

The charter of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stipulates that the host nation must “organise a programme of cultural events” that should:

• promote harmonious relations, mutual understanding and friendship among the participants and others attending the Olympic Games;
• highlight the shared values of sport and the arts in terms of excellence, endeavour and achievement;
• promote the arts and culture of the host city and host nation while embracing an international cultural dimension; and
• provide a dynamic and high profile context for promoting Olympism and the Olympic Games.

When London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics this is exactly what was promised – a Games for everyone. A Games where everyone is invited to take part and get involved, not just athletes and spectators and not just people living in or around London.

This is to be a Games which will benefit the whole of the UK.

It is important to distinguish between Handover Celebrations which will take place on the closing days of the Beijing Olympic Games, August 24th 2008, and Paralympic Games, September 17th 2008. These one-off events will celebrate London’s role as the incoming Olympic City. On these days the Olympic and Paralympic flags are handed from the Mayor of Beijing to the Mayor of London; these flags will then fly over County Hall on London’s South Bank. The Handover Ceremonies will be shown live on a series of Live Sites across the country – the first Live Site in the South East will be most probably be erected in Southampton.

You are encouraged to take part in Handover Days by creating a celebratory event – this can be anything from a civic event to a street party to a sports day. Individuals and organisations are encouraged to contact their Local Authority to find out if anything is planned in their region or district. Closer to the time the Creative Programmer will be able to provide a list of region wide activity.

The Cultural Olympiad, an ongoing celebration of the richness and diversity of the UK’s culture will be launched in Autumn 2008 and, through its planned legacy, has the potential to continue to change the lives of a generation long after 2012.

The Cultural Olympiad is not for the six weeks of the Games but for the four years from the launch event in 2008 through to the end of the London Paralympic Games in 2012.

The moment the Olympic flag is passed to the Mayor of London at the conclusion of the Beijing Games, London becomes the Olympic city and the eyes of the world will turn on the UK.

The Olympics is the largest logistical project in the world. Over 200 countries participate in the Games and it attracts an estimated television audience of 4 billion people worldwide.

That’s two thirds of the world’s population looking into our shop window.

Hosting the Olympics offers the UK and the region the opportunity of a lifetime to promote and celebrate the richness and diversity of our culture.

In 2012, when hundreds of thousands of visitors arrive in the UK they will be looking for things to do, sights to see and places to stay.

Some will also be looking for places to return to and explore further in future years.

Others will be looking to us for inspiration and will want to invest in our innovative ideas and skills.

But it’s also an opportunity for the country as a whole to invest in its culture:

• challenging what we do and how we do it;
• creating new partnerships and finding new ways of working together;
• enhancing the skills and extending opportunities for cultural providers;
• to blur the lines between sport and art;
• working across regional boundaries, across sectors and on a larger scale;
• ensuring excellence
• embedding culture in regional and local policy;

The Cultural Olympiad also represents an opportunity to engage with young people and raise the skills and aspirations of a generation.

Detailed criteria and protocol for the UK wide Cultural Festival will be published in early Spring 2008 (expected March). These will be available from the Creative Programmers and from LOCOG>

This is to give the regions and nations time to input their ideas and plans to the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG), ensuring these really will be a Games for the whole of the UK.

However, we already have a list of values and themes that the Cultural Olympiad will need to reflect and support.

The 3 core values are to:

• Celebrate London and the whole of the UK welcoming the world
• Inspire and involve young people
• Generate a positive legacy

The themes are:

• bring together culture and sport;
• encourage audiences to take part;
• animate and humanise public spaces – through street theatre, public art, circus skills, live big screen sites;
• use culture and sport to raise issues of environmental sustainability, health and wellbeing;
• honour and share the values of the Olympic and Paralympic Games;
• ignite cutting edge collaborations and innovation between communities and cultural sectors; and
• enhance the learning, skills and personal development of young people by linking with our education programmes.

These themes have emerged at national level from discussions with the cultural sector.

It is expected that every project in the Cultural Olympiad will have to address the three core values (in bold) and at least three of the themes.

Projects are also likely to have an impact at regional or, at least, sub-regional level and to be developed and delivered by multiple partners.

The Cultural Olympiad will operate on a number of different levels.

At the top level there will be a series of high profile ceremonies, among them the opening and closing ceremonies of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Second there will be a UK-wide programme of work delivered throughout the nations and regions by one or other of the national cultural agencies (for example the Arts Council of England, the UK Film Council or the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council or their equivalents in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). These projects were part of the bid process in winning the Games for London and are therefore often referred to as the bid projects.

Examples of this programme include:

• Artists Taking the Lead - a major artists’ commission in each nation and region led by the Arts Council of England
• Film & Video Nation- a national record of the years leading up to the Olympic Games led by the UK Film Council
• International Exhibitions Programme – telling the stories of the world through redefining international collections held in the UK led by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

Criteria and a roll-out timetable for the bid projects will be released at the launch of the Cultural Olympiad in Autumn 2008.

You can find more information in a June Briefing paper issued by LOCOG called Culture Update.  This can be downloaded here

You will however note that some of the information within this is a little out of date and you should take information in this briefing paper to be the most up-to-date.

While parts of these programmes will be delivered in the regions, there will also be a third level of work distinct to each region and nation, The UK Cultural Festival.

In the South East of England, there are significant programmes of work already in development and a number of milestone events that may help to shape that third level programme.

These might include:

• Developing the many festivals in the South East to profile the region.
• A scheme to ensure that each young person in the region gets to ‘Create, Compete or Collaborate’ with a young person in a competitor nation.
• Anniversary events
• The Island Games 2011
• Olympic rowing events at Eton Dorney

Moreover we will use the Cultural Olympiad programme to capacity build and add value to projects developing particular strands that might not happen otherwise, rather than simply re-branding existing or planned projects under the Olympiad banner.

Finding the common strands between projects planned across the region would give the Olympiad a strong regional focus and flavour. These strands might include:

• Celebration – to include carnival arts, festivals, street arts, music, food, circus skills, Live Sites, public art and open air screenings
• Information and reporting – to include interpretation, documentation and the creation of web sites and digital and living archives
• The Thames – looking at how the geography of the region may provide opportunities in terms of developing profile and cross region working.

Each of these strands would have skills/learning, disability and a focus on young people embedded in them.

Funding is likely to come from a combination of different sources that may include the Lottery Distributors (Arts Council England, South East; the Heritage Lottery Fund; the Big Lottery and Sport England), Local Authorities, trusts such as Youth Music and commercial sponsorship. There are website links at the end of the document to connect you with funding bodies.

Legacy Trust UK, a charitable trust, has been set up whose mission is to:

To support a wide range of innovative cultural and sporting activities for all, which celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and which will leave a lasting legacy of them in communities throughout the United Kingdom

Initially sixteen Grants will be made under the following three broad themes:

• Sport & Wellbeing
• Knowledge & Learning
• Arts & Culture

Legacy Trust UK will channel its funds through “Legacy Partners” in order to ensure the efficient and effective distribution of funds and to reach out to communities across the UK. More information can be found on www.legacytrustuk.org

The Legacy Trust has also made an allocation of money to each region or nation to run an over-arching strategic project as part of the region-wide Olympiad programme over the next five years (2008-2012). The South East was allocated £1.92million for this period which will be split over the five years once the strategic direction has been agreed.

There will be no open grant programmes as the aim of the Board is to keep the funding focused and ensure that administration is kept to a minimum. An advisory group, representing the major cultural stakeholders in the region, has been formed and Culture South East will be co-ordinating an outline proposal which will go forward to the Trust board by 28 February 2008.

All projects included in the Cultural Olympiad programme will carry a common brand. It is hoped that this will relate to the now familiar London 2012 brand but discussions on this are still ongoing.

All projects carrying the brand will have been given express permission to do so by LOCOG.

Clearly no event or programme of activity will be able to carry the brand before the launch of the Olympiad in Autumn 2008.

The London 2012 and all Olympic brands (e.g: the five coloured Olympic rings) and all Olympic-associated words and wording (e.g: Olympic Games; Olympiad; London 2012) are trademarks protected by the law.

Any project, event or conference, organisation or job title, however large or small, that wants to associate itself with the Olympic or Paralympic Games or with the Cultural Olympiad via use of any of these brands or words should go to: www.london2012.com/about/our-brand/using-the-brand.php for guidance and advice.

If in any doubt consult the 2012 Regional Coordinator (Paddy Herlihy) or Creative Programmer (Caterina Loriggio).

Now that the Creative Programmer is in post she will be meeting with major stakeholders in the cultural sector in the region, as well as the LOCOG team and other Creative Programmers from the regions and nations, the next steps for the South East are to:

• Publish full guidelines and protocol for engagement with the UK Cultural Festival with LOCOG in Spring 2008.
• Guide and inform the work towards identifying potential programmes of work that might be funded by the Legacy Trust UK and/or populate the Cultural Olympiad programme in the region. By the end of June 2008.
• Engender and nurture Handover Day Celebrations.
• Devise a communications plan to ensure that the cultural sector has up to date information about the regional offer and LOCOG’s plan.

The first point of contact and information on the Cultural Olympiad in the South East is Caterina Loriggio who is based in and managed by Culture South East. Caterina is out of the country between mid-January and March 2008 but will still be contactable via email.

If you want to receive future updates about the Cultural Olympiad in the region please e-mail Caterina giving your explicit permission for your information to be included on a database for this purpose (we will not share your details with other organisations or send you information about other initiatives unless you request these). This will help Caterina when she comes to devise a regional communications strategy.

If you have an idea for a project that you would like to nominate for inclusion within the Cultural Olympiad programme and have checked its eligibility against the information available in this document, please contact Caterina by email with a brief outline of your proposal. However you may be better advised to wait until Spring 2008 when detailed criteria for inclusion in the programme will be available.

Caterina is anticipating a high volume of e-mail enquiries in the first instance. So please be patient, she will reply to all communications in time.

Contact details for Caterina Loriggio:

Culture South East
Bridge House
1 Walnut Tree Close
Guildford
GU1 4GA

c.loriggio@culturesoutheast.org.uk

Arts Council England, South East www.artscouncil.org.uk

Big Lottery Fund www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Culture South East www.culturesoutheast.org.uk

English Heritage, South East www.english-heritage.org.uk

Heritage Lottery Fund www.hlf.org.uk

London 2012 www.london2012.com

MLA South East www.mlasoutheast.org.uk

British Olympic Organisation www.olympics.org.uk

British Paralympic Organisation www.paralympics.org.uk

Screen South www.screensouth.co.uk

South East England Development Agency www.seeda.co.uk

Sport England South East www.sportengland.org/southeast

Tourism South East www.visitsoutheastengland.com

The government defines culture as a combination of all the processes involved in creating, presenting, understanding and learning about seven activity areas :

• the visual arts (including 2 and 3D work, public art, graphic design, textiles, fashion, ceramics, wood and stone carving, metal work and photography)
• the performing arts (including dance, drama, musical performance, physical theatre, storytelling, street arts, carnival arts, festivals, puppeteers, performance poetry and circus)
• audio-visual presentation (including the making, recording and editing of animations, games, websites, film and music)
• books and press (including libraries, poetry and prose)
• sport and health (including Olympic and non-Olympic sports, extreme sports, rural and urban trails and walks, cycle networks and the rights of way network)
• heritage (including museums and archives, the built and natural heritage/environment, landscapes, coast and parks and gardens)
• tourism (including food and drink, attractions, slow tourism initiatives, cultural tourism, accommodation and hospitality services)