On November 7th I took part in the Olympic Memory Marathon, a video project by artist Simon Pope capturing 104 Londoners talking about their experience of the Olympics, whilst he walked the length of a marathon through the streets of the boroughs hosting the 2012 games. These are the memories that I related to him. I've never been lucky enough to go to an Olympics, but I have visited several of the stadiums where the games have been held....
At the weekend I took part in an art project for the London 2012 Olympics called the "Memory Marathon". Artist Simon Pope walked the distance of a marathon whilst talking to 104 people who lived or worked in the London Boroughs hosting the next games about their memories of the Olympics. Yesterday I blogged about the workshops leading up to the event, and today I wanted to write about my experience on November 7th, the day of the "Memory...
"This is an unusual project, and I can tell that by being here you are unusual people" Our facilitator wasn't wrong - within a couple of minutes of arriving at my first workshop for the Olympic Memory Marathon I was being accosted by a wonderful fiftysomething out of work actress assuring me that didn't do porn (but that she did get asked), and by another guy tipsy enough that he gave the impression of not remembering why he was...
When I blogged yesterday about the strengths of the Mail Online's comment voting system, I steered clear of comment on the subject matter being voted on. It seemed to me that there were enough people pontificating on the Carol Thatcher / One Show issue, so why should I add anything to the cacophony?However, yesterday I changed my mind. Firstly I read this piece by Hannah Pool in The Guardian, which reminded me of how much racial abuse my non-white classmates...
A lot has been made of how the 2012 London Olympics will leave a 'lasting legacy' for the capital in terms of infrastructure investment and regeneration. One thing that is important for the bid team is to make sure that a couple of years after the Olympic circus has left town, people can actually see the effect. I thought about this whilst I was in Gelsenkirchen, a host city at the 2006 World Cup Finals. The VELTINS Arena was one...
Back in February and March of this year I did a series of articles about blog comments, and one of my suggestions was that doing an occasional round-up of interesting comments was a way of making sure they got attention, particularly if they had been left on older articles. One way or another I've been in a bit of an Internet connection black hole for the last five weeks or so, and it means that the moderating of comments on...
In Beijing today, at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, the Olympic Flag will be handed over to London, marking the official moment that London becomes the host of the 2012 Games. It also marks the hand-over of all of the politics, protest and dissent that usually accompanies an Olympic Games. Over the last 3 weeks I've been examining that history, from the modern founding of the Games in 1896, through the Nazi Olympics of 1936, the protest-laden...
In just a few days time, at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, China will hand over the Olympic flag to London. I'm quite relieved it is just the flag actually, because I had this terrible mental image of them handing over the Olympic Flame, and then Boris having to keep it burning in his draw in City Hall for the next four years. He'll be receiving the flag though, from the Mayor of Beijing, in a handover ceremony...
With all eyes on the political situation surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics in China, I've been writing a series of posts looking at the history of politics, protest and dissent at the Olympic Games. In the last post I was looking at what was the low-point of the Olympic movement to date - the hijacking of the games by the Nazis for propaganda purposes in Berlin in 1936. London in 1948 After World War II the Games resumed with...
Hosting the Olympic Games in the People's Republic of China has put the spotlight on China's human rights and environmental record, and there have been some calls for the games to be boycotted. It seems that even from the start of the modern Olympics in 1896, the games have found themselves inevitably entwined with politics, protest, and dissent. Yesterday I wrote about how the Greek hosts in 1896 used the opportunity to boost national pride, but also how one...
With the 2008 edition of the Olympic Games just days away, today is the sixtieth anniversary of the opening of the 1948 London Olympic Games. Unlike the previous time that London held the games, in 1908, when they started in April and lasted most of the summer, the 1948 games had a recognisably modern two week format. London had only a couple of years to prepare, having been awarded the games ahead of Baltimore, Lausanne, Los Angeles and Philadelphia in...
Earlier this week I wrote a post on the anniversary of the 1906 Intercalated Olympic Games in Athens. We are used to the Summer Olympics being held later in the year nowadays, but April used to be the chosen month to get the games underway. Today is the centenary anniversary of the first time that London held the games. Following the first three modern Olympiads in Athens, Paris and St. Louis, the 1908 Olympic Games were scheduled to be held...
The fact that the modern summer Olympics have generally been run in late summer means that there is a cluster of Olympic anniversaries in August. However, today is the 102nd anniversary of the opening of the 1906 games being held in Athens. These games are remarkable because they are no longer counted as 'official'. Athens held the first modern Olympics in 1896, and also wanted to host the 1900 edition. Paris was offered this honour instead, but by way of...
It sometimes seems that, rather like the funding mechanisms of the British Labour Party, politics in Greece simply lurches from one scandalous crisis to the next. Before Zahopoulos there were the accusations by the government that the opposition party was deliberately starting the devastating summer forest fires, and before that there was the bond sales saga. Way back when I first arrived in Greece, it was the Vodafone phone-tapping issue that was top of the scandal agenda. Whilst the Zahopoulos...
Whilst I was poking around the English language Greek news sites for information on the Zahopoulos case, another news item caught my eye in Kathimerini. 'Games website lost for a pittance' explains that: "Internet users wishing to find information on the Athens 2004 Olympic Games are no longer able to access its official website after the government failed to renew the rights to the domain name. A 29.30-euro fee required by site owners to renew domain name ownership rights every...
I was rather lucky on Monday to get to go to a promotional evening on the walkways of Tower Bridge, called "East meets West". I've been up there a few times, as my wife used to work there, and I've even DJed up in one of the towers. The bridge itself is unique in being both a heritage monument, a working bridge, and an astonishing feat of Victorian design and engineering. The event was being held to celebrate the success...
It hasn't been a good week or so for the 2012 London Olympics, what with the logo fiasco and all that. The Sun, well known champion of minority rights and anti-discrimination, ran a competition featuring a blind woman and a monkey to improve the logo design. Nice to see The Sun think of them as equals. And I noted that they managed to plug the software used by their designer for her effort: "The Sun's graphics editor Kathryn George also...
Do you have a logo for your business or event? Does it neatly encapsulate the vision of what you are doing - say for example including a recognisable landmark like the Thames, in the colours of something to do with what you are promoting, I don't know, say the Olympics? Does it carry all the vital information you need to convey, say for example the date and location of the event? Have you sold a ton of merchandising already featuring...
The BBC wasn't the only site to suffer from the volume of Olympic related internet traffic just after decision time this afternoon - whilst we had to switch to our frankly ugly mini-me version of the homepage to help the servers cool off, london2012.org died completely. Elsewhere on the web the DCMS opted for a massive splash graphic to announce the news, whilst london.gov.uk went for a more restrained approach. Meanwhile the official Olympics site used the iconic image...
Another thing that happened whilst I was away from work was that the BBC's Broadcast Centre got a wall display about the 1908 Olympic Games that were held on the site. As I approach my office every morning I cross over a marker on the ground that shows where the finish line of the 1908 track was placed. (Sometimes, if I think nobody is looking I approach it in a faux slow-motion run whilst whistling the Vangelis theme tune from...
Tonight's Evening Standard printed a letter from a London Assembly Member, Labour's Cllr Murad Qureshi: I see that French Arsenal and Chelsea players have aligned themselves with the Paris bid to host the 2012 Olympics I would have thought Londoners who pay £40 a match to watch footballers who are paid £20,000 a week would expect a little more loyalty. Hmm, I wonder what the public reaction would be if a certain David Beckham and Michael Owen showed the kind...
I've never been a huge fan of the Olympics in the past. When I was growing up the events most likely to make an impact on my consciousness were the politically-driven boycott-stricken years of 1980 and 1984 - which all seemed a bit silly to a 9 year old. For Athens though I have a professional interest - the BBC has invested a huge amount of time in securing and delivering broadband media rights, and we have multi-screen interactivity on...
