“The Olympic Games is the wedding of sport and art.” Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937)
On July 6, 2005, London won the right to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. The Games are always about more than sport; host cities must also stage something called the Cultural Olympiad, usually a series of events to showcase the city’s arts and culture to the rest of the world.
What’s different about the London Games is that we won the right for culture to play a central role in the 2012 Games. What’s more, this Cultural Olympiad will be a four-year programme across every nation and region of the United Kingdom, starting in the autumn of 2008.
This is groundbreaking. The Cultural Olympiad will be a four-year celebration on a scale never before seen in Olympic and Paralympic history, designed to enable the widest range of people across the UK to take part. London 2012 is opening up its culture programme as never before by inviting not-for-profit organisations throughout London and the UK to submit ideas and projects for the Cultural Olympiad.
The process of building up the programme will begin this year, with at least some events planned for the autumn, and then developing in pace and scale as 2012 becomes closer.
