The Olympics will not be televised

CreateskillsDecember 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.

Sport on telly basically.

They were wrong.

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 that just about sport on telly?

Is an event that has provided the backdrop for..

government massacres...

terrorist attacks...

national boycotts...

political demonstrations...

truces...

and brawls...

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

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 that just about sport on telly?

Is an event that inspires great architectural,..

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filmic,..

and artistic works....

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

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.

So that’s...

Stories of LondonConnections to the WorldThe Changing CityDreams 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...

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“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.

CreateskillsDecember 2010

charlietims@gmail.com