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A SEE-IN partner

Cultural Olympiad: regional activity

In the South East of England, Cultural Olympiad work will:

  • Strive to deliver an exciting and inspiring programme of excellent cultural activity across the four year celebration of the Cultural Olympiad which capacity builds and profiles the cultural sector in its entirety.
  • Develop the aspiration and skills of our cultural providers leading to more innovative excellent work beyond 2012.
  • Develop a more challenging and knowledgeable market place.
  • Celebrate and profile the South East, enhancing sense of place for those who live and work here as well as attracting more visitors and business investment to the region.
  • Encourage wide scale participation in milestone celebratory events (such as Handover) and, working with SEESEL, in the 2012 Education programme.

In particular it will concentrate on:

  • Outdoor performance, meaning celebratory arts, street arts, carnival, Mela (Asian carnival), animating public space (including urban, natural landscape and heritage sites), outdoor screen and public realm.

It will help people in this sector to develop their work and profile. It wants to see work of the highest quality and will therefore support professional development, enable cross sector networks and partnerships, work with further and higher education to train and upskill, improve infrastructure and provide more opportunities for work. It will work to ensure enhanced community engagement with this work.

It envisages that this work will go some way to ensuring that the London 2012 Ceremonies are created in the South East and are peopled by South East artists.

The South East aims to be the lead region in the UK for outdoor arts.

  • Disability and deaf cultural activity. Investing resources in to deaf and disabled arts, access for deaf and disabled audiences and visitors, investing in deaf and disabled cultural leadership, improved visibility for disabled people, improved awareness of the barriers faced by disabled people, raising aspirations for young deaf and disabled people, celebrating Stoke Mandeville as the birth place of the Paralympics.

This work is closely aligned to Accentuate, the Legacy Trust programme.

The South East aims to be the lead region in the UK for disability arts and culture, and aims to be the most welcoming region in the Uk for disabled people.

  • The South East’s strong festival offer – developing and improving community led events, profiling and enhancing the leading festivals across a range of genre.

 With SEEDA and a range of cultural partners to support three Festival Cluster Pilots which aim to:

  • Achieve international recognition for excellence in key locations.
  • Achieve spin off benefits e.g. up-skilling, capacity building, promotion and marketing of smaller festivals.
  • Celebrate diversity and local distinctiveness.

At each step of the way the work within the Cultural Olympiad will look to:

  • Follow its core values and themes
  • Make best use of the South East’s Creative Industries and advanced digital technology.
  • Enhance volunteering opportunities.

At the end of the four years it is hoped that the South East will have:

  • A revitalised, stronger and more equitable cultural sector which has its intrinsic, institutional and instrumental value acknowledged and a wider public engaging with it.
  • A more sustainable network of festivals and artists.
  • Enhanced cultural leadership across the region
Also
  • The South East will be recognised as an innovative and exciting region.
  • It will be the lead region in the UK for deaf and disabled cultural activity and for outdoor performance; in both these fields it will be recognised as an international centre of excellence.

These priorities have been set through three months consultation with the region, through alignment with Cultural and Regional Agency priorities, and through alignment with Accentuate.

Four priority geographic areas:

Whilst recognising that the whole of the South East can benefit from London 2012, four geographic areas have been identified as having the most potential to benefit. These are the areas that will attract the eyes of the world through specific Games and Games related activity. It is important to note that significant work and resources are needed in order for them to fully embrace the opportunity:

  • Dorney Corridor (London 2012 Rowing events)
  • Stoke Mandeville Corridor (Birthplace of the Paralympics)
  • Solent (Island Games, Live Sites, Ports/Gateways, new performance spaces)
  • North and East Kent (Olympic Park in Thames Gateway, Ports/Gateways and Dover Torch Campaign)

The Creative Programmer will particularly focus her efforts in these locations.