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...
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