Lord Coe says he is confident balance can be struck between security and celebration as he unveils locations of the Olmpic torch’s 70-day journey around the UK to herald the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games.This article titled “London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame route” was written by Owen Gibson, sports news correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 18th May 2011 16.03 UTCLondon 2012 organisers called on protest groups not to disrupt the 8,000-mile journey of the Olympic flame around the UK, after unveiling its route for the first time.Lord Coe, chairman of the London organising committee of the Olympic Games (Locog), said he was confident the balance could be struck between guaranteeing the safety of the 8,000 torchbearers and ensuring a celebratory atmosphere.“We will make sure that the torch flame gets around the UK in the safest and most secure way, but at the same time we want communities to celebrate it and not [put it] behind a cordon of steel. I think we’ll get the balance right,” he said.He appealed to protest groups not to target the route of the torch, which according to tradition will be lit on Mount Olympus before beginning its journey around the UK at Land’s End on 18 May next year.“This is friendship, this is respect, this is showcasing extraordinary talent in local communities. I really don’t sit here thinking this will be a catalyst for massive demonstrations. I think people get this,” he said.The Beijing torch relay in 2008, the last that ventured beyond the borders of the host country before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) changed its policy, was chiefly remembered for protests and heavy-handed security. In Vancouver, protesters disrupted the last few days of the event, sparking counter-demonstrations from those supporting it.Coe, unveiling the first 74 locations on the torch’s 70-day tour of the UK, said the relay would be vital in igniting enthusiasm for the London Games beyond the capital and insisted that it would not be a giant marketing exercise for sponsors.“I am proud and excited as I envisage the moment that really marks the start of our Olympic celebrations in the UK and far beyond,” said Coe, who ran with the torch ahead of the Vancouver Games.“As it made its way around Canada, it drew renewable power from every community it passed through. As it made its journey across that huge land mass, Vancouver’s Games became Canada’s Games.“That is London 2012′s intention too. Ours will be a Games that takes place on your doorstep.”The 8,000 torchbearer places are divided between Locog and the three “presenting partners” – Coca-Cola, Lloyds TSB and Samsung – who will help fund the events that will take place at each overnight stop.As the only part of the Olympics that can be branded, it is likely the sponsors will have a heavy presence but, like Locog, they have promised to make the vast majority of their torchbearer places available to members of the public.Coe said more than 90% of places would be taken by the public, with half of the torchbearers aged between 12 and 24.Locog has already launched its own nominations campaign, inviting the public to put forward members of their community with inspiring stories.The sponsors will take a similar approach in distributing the tickets to the public and staff. The cast of public torchbearers is likely to be augmented by athletes and celebrities.The announcement has also sparked speculation about the likely identity of the final torchbearer who will light the cauldron in the Olympic stadium at the climax of the opening ceremony, with bookmakers installing Sir Steve Redgrave as favourite.The final route will take the torch to within an hour of 95% of the population across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and six outlying islands. It will visit the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, Shetland, Orkney and the Isle of Lewis. Coe said Locog was also in advanced talks to take the torch to Dublin.British IOC member Sir Craig Reedie said the route would also pass UK sporting landmarks including Wimbledon, Old Trafford, St Andrew’s and Much Wenlock in Shropshire, the birthplace of the modern Olympics.The event will also be crucial to the cash-strapped British Olympic Association. Under the terms of its recent settlement with Locog after it backed down in a row over the division of any surplus from the Games, it will receive the royalties to two branded items of Olympic merchandise.In Vancouver, more than 3.5m pairs of red mittens were sold to those who lined the route to raise money for Canadian sport. The BOA will unveil its branded merchandise next year. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogLondon Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame routeRelated posts:London Olympic organisers defend ‘peculiar’ ticket payment processLondon 2012 Olympics countdown clock stopsIran claims London 2012 Olympics logo spells ‘Zion’
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London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame route
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May 18 2011, 11:57am | Comments »
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London’s 2012 Olympics must be a ‘regeneration games’
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/londons-2012-olympics-must-be-a-regeneration-games
Unless the London 2012 Olympics deliver their promised regeneration legacy for East London, the whole project will have ultimately failed
This article titled “London’s 2012 Olympics must be a ‘regeneration games’” was written by Dave Hill, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 15th March 2011 12.57 UTC There are 500 days to go, the tickets are on sale and the big question on Radio 5 Live this morning was, “Are you up for the Olympics?” Well, I am, in spite of everything. Everything? Well, there’s been Locog’s miserable decision to switch the marathon route away from the East End, enabling overseas TV viewers to be spared seeing what real East Enders look like and instead compare their chocolate box mental images of Buck House with scenic pictures of the real thing. There’s the mad prices of some of the seats and the lurking whiff of ligging and privilege. There’s the colourful tale of Boris Johnson, his “fund-raising champion“, her former lover and the eighty grand that unhappy gentleman coughed up to help an arty monument tower immodestly above the Olympic Park. The result, being bolted together as we speak, is formally called the ArcelorMittal Orbit, though London blogger Diamond Geezer thinks only by people who write press releases. Then there’s the logo, which I still can’t learn to love. There’s the unending, well-meaning bilge about the Games inspiring a modern equivalent of Muscular Christianity, when we all know perfectly well that Britannia’s couch potatoes will take still deeper root when high definition telly makes it plainer to them than ever that serious sporting exertion involves pain. Most of all, there’s my bedrock scepticism about the Olympic project as a whole: I like sport, but the industry that attends it is absurd; I like the idea that London 2012 will bring prosperity to what has long been the capital’s poorest compass point, but am wary of the very concept of urban regeneration. Who really profits in the end? And yet I’m “Up for the Olympics” anyway. For one thing, is there a choice? The rash of post-credit crunch commentariat demands that London 2012 should emulate the austerity Games of 1948 struck me as joyless and contrary. There was no point in rowing back by then. The Games have long been a case of in for a lot of pennies, in for a lot of pounds and work like crazy to make the investment pay. For another thing, I live near the Olympic Park. Once these words are safely launched I’ll be running from my doorstep to the stadium and back as part of my London Marathon training schedule. Over the months I’ve watched the various venues grow from seed. I challenge anyone to stand on the Greenway linking Stratford and the River Lea and remain unstirred by the romance of the Olympic vision even if, like me, you fret that history will judge it foolhardy. I don’t mean patriotic dreams of sporting glory, intoxicating though they are. I mean those hopes that the running and the jumping, the pedaling and the diving, will indeed prepare the ground for the gradual creation of new London neighbourhoods that bring new jobs and homes to the Londoners who need them most and exemplify the best in big city planning. West Ham’s securing of the stadium as their new home was a hopeful sign. Neither their bid nor Tottenham’s was ideal, but the principle that the publicly-funded Games infrastructure should have some continuing public use has been honoured. Will the same spirit guide the sorts of homes built on the wider Olympic Park – the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as it’s become since the general election – over the next twenty years? Will as many as possible be affordable to low-paid and even averagely-paid Londoners? Will the press and broadcast centres, which have formed before the sometimes disbelieving eyes of residents of Leabank Square, really give career opportunities to locals who lack them now? I could be applying for my Freedom Pass by the time answers to such questions are truly known. Tomorrow morning, the London Assembly will be trying to find out if those answers will be “yes”. Unless they are, more ominous one will soon arise. What were the 2012 Olympics really for?
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Related posts:Iran claims London 2012 Olympics logo spells ‘Zion’ Olympic Games 2012 medal haul will beat Beijing, promises UK Sport Olympics Anish Kapoor tower hopes to attract 1m visitors a year
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March 15 2011, 8:11am | Comments »
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Artist Anish Kapoor warns arts cuts are ‘rolling us back to the Thatcher years’
Anish Kapoor is the artist commissioned to build the Orbit Tower for the Olympics Stadium in Stratford
This article titled “Artist Anish Kapoor warns arts cuts are ‘rolling us back to the Thatcher years’” was written by Maev Kennedy, for The Guardian on Thursday 3rd March 2011 17.14 UTC The Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor has accused the Tories of having a “castration complex” about the arts, warning that it will take decades to recover from the damage caused by current cuts. “Already they’re rolling us back to the situation of the Thatcher years, and that took 15 years for the arts to recover,” he said. “I despair of this government, they just don’t get it, they just don’t understand that citizenship, community spirit, all the things they’re talking about, can come from art, can come from a sense of cultural belonging.” “I’ve given up on them, I’m afraid. To me it seems that it is neo-rightwing policies being forced through under the pretence of being middle of the road and reasonable.” Kapoor, in uncharacteristically angry and political mood, was in Manchester for the opening of his first major exhibition outside London in 12 years. He fears that no young artist today will have the career boost from a public institution that he received when at 25 the Arts Council Collection, organiser of his current exhibition, bought some of his earliest work. The collection paid £3,500 for his 1982 piece White Sand, Red Millet, Many Flowers, which used intricate shapes and raw powder pigment. The money was enough to keep him working as an artist for many months at a time when most of his contemporaries despaired of earning a living from their art. The exhibition – at the free admission Manchester Art Gallery, now losing staff to voluntary redundancy and struggling to make major savings for a second year – includes loans from other public collections. Her Blood, three enormous reflecting discs which took two lorries to transport, is owned by the Tate but has never been exhibited in the UK before; a major mirror piece came from Bradford, and another very early pigment piece is from Liverpool, and has not been displayed for years. “The value of having these pieces in public collections is immense,” Kapoor argued. “Not just in money terms, though they are all worth far, far more than these institutions paid, but in being where people can see them freely, be inspired, believe that this is possible.” Kapoor is on a roll. His giant twisting red tower is already rising on the 2012 Olympics site, and he became the first living artist since Henry Moore to be exhibited in the royal parks when several of his mirror pieces were installed in Hyde Park last year. He mounted a huge twin city show backed by the British Council in India last year, his first in his native country, and he is also working on commissions for the Venice Biennale, as well as a site specific piece for the gigantic 13,500 sq metre nave of the Grand Palais in Paris. Surprisingly, although Kapoor is responsible for giant public art installations in cities across the UK, his last exhibition outside London was in 1999. He helped choose the works for this show, which include loans from his studio of new pieces in alarmingly blood-red wax. This is the second Flashback exhibition drawn from the Arts Council Collection, showing off some of the curators’ most inspired hunches, artists now world-renowned whom they backed in their earliest days: the first show was of Bridget Riley, and the next will be Gary Hume. The collection, now run by the Hayward Gallery at the South Bank arts complex, was founded in 1946 – “two years before the National Health”, as director Caroline Douglas points out – to support emerging artists, and holds work by Henry Moore, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin. At a time when most cash-strapped public collections have pared acquisitions to the bone, it still has an annual acquisitions budget of £180,000, and adds around 30 works every year. As well as mounting exhibitions, the collection makes loans to institutions such as hospitals and schools. Kapoor looks fondly at the brilliant colours of the piece he made and sold just two years after graduating from Chelsea School of Art. “It made a huge difference. That a public institution had enough confidence in me to put its money where its mouth was, that meant everything.” Anish Kapoor: Flashback. Manchester Art Gallery March 5 – June 5, then touring.
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Related posts:Olympics Anish Kapoor tower hopes to attract 1m visitors a year Goldsmiths new arts complex 70 Years of Revisionism
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March 3 2011, 11:59am | Comments »
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Figure of Eight Banger Racing
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2009/04/24/figure-of-eight-banger-racing
Here’s an aerial picture of The Coombe Valley Raceway Banger Racing stadium in Dover Kent where I used to go on alternate Sundays to watch the banger racing, stock cars, hot rods and mini rods. They also hold special two day meetings to give people something to do on bank holidays. I don’t know how many other figure of eight racing circuits there are in the world but this is the only one I’ve ever heard of. The banger racing takes place in beautiful valley surrounded by wooded hillsides, typical of the East Kent chalk downs.
Here’s an amateur video of a big van bangers race which I think captures some of the excitement and chaos of standing on the bank near the approach to the pits bend.
Another one of a Bangers Destruction Derby
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April 24 2009, 5:34am | Comments »
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