Olympics will not_be_televised

The Olympics will not be televised

Createskills
December 2010
charlietims@gmail.com

A few years ago I did some research with
Demos and A New Direction, looking at
what the Olympics meant to young people
in London.

This became a small report called The
Biggest Learning Opportunity on Earth.

During the research we met young
people in schools across East London.

They tended to think two things about
the Olympics.

That it was about sport.
And that you watch it on the telly.

Is an event watched by 70% of the world’s
population, that costs billions to stage and
brings together more countries than the United
Nations...

.....is that just about sport on telly?

Is an event that provokes cities to transform
their appearance at great expence....

Is an event that has provided the backdrop for..

Is an event that was revived by a passionate
French educationalist..

...who recruited school children to ﬁght in the
trenches, whose heart is buried in the Temple of
Apollo in Mount Olympus and who aspired to
create ʻhumanityʼs superior religionʼ...

Is an event that inspires great architectural,..

When I tell people that I’m working on an
Olympic education project, their eyes tend to
glaze over. This isn’t fair. The Olympics are
interesting for four reasons.

First, the Olympics are about stories of
London...

During the Olympics the whole world will look at
London. People across the world will make
judgements about the city based on what they
see and experience. This means that London has
to tell a story about itself - you will see this in
things like the Opening Ceremony, in a Cultural
Festival and the Olympic Festival. For those of us
in London it’s a chance to explore all the different
stories that make up the city today, the stories
that bought us here and the stories we share in
common. For curious people it’s a chance to
think about whether the story London is
presenting to the world is the right one and if it
reﬂects us all in the right way.

Second, the Olympics are about connections to
the world

The Olympics brings people together from
across the world and puts them in one place.
This is what makes it different from other major
sporing events, like The World Cup. The
Olympic Games connects the world and in
doing so encourages us to explore what those
connections mean. What do we have to learn
from people in other cultures? What struggles,
hopes and fears do we share with them? What
ideas, objects and tools have we already
shared with them? Curious people will want to
explore the difference between the Olympic
promise of a more harmonious, peaceful world
and the world as we actually know it.

The Olympics are also about how cities
change.

The Olympics changes the face of a city. A
huge zone needs to be rebuilt to make room for
the the athletes, the media and the stadiums.
Transport links to the site need to be improved
- and across the city all development projects
are rushed forward, ready for the capital’s big
moment. There are new buildings and locations
to explore and new ways to see the city.
Curious people will be interested to see who
beneﬁts from changes and will wonder whether
the type of city they want to live in, is the type
of city that is emerging from Olympics.

Finally, the Olympics are about dreams of
something better.

The Olympics are a dream of a more perfect,
equal, harmonious world. That’s why we like
them. But the larger they grow the harder it is
to keep them separate from the imperfect,
unequal, and messy real world we live in.
Dreams though, are still important. They are the
starting point for something to happen, that
otherwise would not have been possible. That’s
why it’s important to remember dreams. Which
means we need to express them. And we need
artists to express them too. The Olympics are
an opportunity to explore, express and collect
your dreams and the dreams of others.

Stories of London
Connections to the World
The Changing City
Dreams of Something Better

Culture, the arts, music etc tend to do
three things for the Olympics. They
provide decoration for the games to
make the site and its buildings look
beautiful. They provide (free)
entertainment for lots of people -
including those who might not be able to
get in to the games. And they also
provide a way for people to explore the
and what they mean. That is what the
enquiry schools programme at A New
Direction is currently about.

Now, London’s Olympics were won on a
promise to young people...

“Seb Coe has made it clear that the
London 2012 Games is all about the young
people of the world. Heʼs keen that through
the curiosity, energy and creativity of
todayʼs youth, our country can reach out to
other nations in the spirit of friendship and
sharing. You will be at the heart of that."

What would it mean to hold that promise?...

- it probably means more than a kid in the
opening ceremony.

A legacy for young people should mean that, as
a result of the London Olympics, young people
have oppotunities to explore their city in ways
they couldn’t before. To do things and to
imagine things that were previously impossible.
The Olympics makes cities shinier, and it
makes runners faster - it should make young
people’s horizons wider. This means exploring.
Exploring new spaces, different identities,
different types of work, new ways to make
difference and understanding their place and
position in the world.

Young people taking power, basically.

The Olympics is so far down the tracks now and
there are so many people involved in so many
different ways it’s hard to get a handle on it. But in
different places and in different ways you can see
where the games is making things happen for young
people in this way. I think it’s in our work. It was in
the outcry that stopped the cuts to school sports
funding. It’s in Andy Miah’s campaign for a more
open media. It’s in the Somewhereto project, it’s in
the Create festival, its in the 5 Borough’s
Convergence strategy and it’s in Ruth Mackenzie’s
call to create real opporutnities for young people
accross London. And many other places.

Making this work matters - not just for young
people but for future Olympic Cities, for the UK
City of Culture, for Glasgow’s Commenwealth
Games and all other cities who will host major
events in the hope they can improve young
people’s lives.

I spent much of last year writing about the
future of politics from a young person’s
perspective.

Around this time a string of books were
published that raised the question of
‘generational justice’

These writers argued that the country is
skewed towards the interests of the baby
boomers - in a nutshell: they enjoyed cheap
housing in their youth and how they have
access to a vastly improved NHS and fat
pensions.

I was uncomfortable with this idea. If you
believe in families - in all their forms - which
most of us do, then we would also expect them
to share wealth with their children. I felt like
‘blaming the baby-boomers’ was just a
slapdash way of blaming the wealthy and
getting worries about the environment. I still do
- but the cuts and the atmosphere surrounding
them is starting to feel like we are in a
generational struggle - e.g. education (largely
for the young) is cut while health (largely for the
old) is kept.

It’s an important time for this country to show it
cares about the next generation.

The Olympics will not be televised.
The olympics will be live.

Createskills
December 2010
charlietims@gmail.com

Olympics will not_be_televised

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