Cultural Olympics, 2012

Ready for more Olympics?  The UK arts community, ever hungry for public commisions, is.  Plans for the 2012 Cultural Olympics were announced today by Lord Coe (BBC).  One of the first "events" will be lighting of the Blackpool Tower in "pink, blue, orange and green - the colours of London 2012 - at 2012 BST at 26 September."  (The Chinese get all the luck with the memorable opening ceremony on 8-8-8.  Not a lot you can do with 2012).  Other events in the run up to the actual games will include a youth digital film competition, National Singing Day (!), Festival of Carnivals (in the UK, yet!!), and, subject of our interest, a World Shakespeare Festival.  Just how much more Shakespeare can be performed than is already being performed remains to be seen, but one has to respect the effort, though one would hope for more creative ideas.  After that embarrassing and anemic UK sideshow during the closing ceremonies in Beijing, with a greyed and paler shades of greying Jimmy Page pretending to finger sync to an uninteresting dinosaur boomer anthem sung by the delicious (one must admit) Leona Lewis, it is all uphill.  Click here for the video of Lord Coe making the slightly defensive case for the so called cultural Olympics.  Only slightly less than 4 years to go...