Tag: cultural olympiad

Abandon Normal Devices 29th August – 2nd September

I’ll be speaking at a salon event at this festival of new cinema, digital culture and art on Saturday 1st September.  Also speaking will be Jennifer M Jones, the coordinator for #media2012, a national-wide citizen media network for London 2012.  We’re contributing to Salon #3 ‘Too big to fail?’, a debate on the costs of hosting a successful Olympics .

You can read much more about AND from their excellent website, from which you can also download the programme for the whole festival.  In the text below, the organisers explain what they are all about:

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) is an energetic regional festival of new cinema, digital culture and art. The festival takes place annually in Liverpool and Manchester on alternate years, with an extended regional programme.

Our mission is to push the boundaries of audience experience through a programme that spills out of galleries and screens into the streets of the Northwest.

With a curatorial attitude of participation and innovation, AND has enabled collaborations across the UK’s pioneering digital, science, design and media sectors.

Blogging for the Metro Newspaper on the 2012 Olympics

Over the next few months, I’m going to be blogging for the Metro Newspaper about the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London.  I’m going to concentrate on the non-sporting aspects of the Olympics, as I’m no sporting expert, and I’ll have a focus on issues surrounding the impacts of the Games, economically, socially and culturally.  You can click on the image below to see my most recent posts.

Event: The tourism legacy of the 2012 Olympic Park – 8th December 2011

I’ll be giving a talk at the University of Greenwich on 8th December 2011, on the tourism legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London.  The talk will be part of an Olympic Park Legacy Company event that we’re hosting at Greenwich and also speaking will be Clive Little, the new Director of Events and Programming from the OPLC, Kevin Millington , Director of Acorn Tourism Consulting and Tracy Halliwell, Director of Business Tourism and Major Events at London and Partners, the body who have replaced Visit London.
The Olympic Park in Legacy mode

The presentation I gave at this event is below:

New publication on Olympic legacies

Along with two colleagues, Elizabeth Booth and Charles Bladen, I have edited a collection of papers from our Olympic Legacy conference held last year at the University of Greenwich. The collection contains seven substantial, refereed papers on Olympic legacy issues, including information about London 2012, Beijing 2008, Torino 2006, the Cultural Olympiad, volunteering and an overview of the meanings of ‘olympic legacy’.  You can download the publication for free by clicking on the image below.  If you would like a hard copy for your library or reference use, please leave a comment on this post and I will get in touch.

olympics cover

Cultural Olympiad review published

An article that I have written with a colleague has just been published in the journal Cultural Trends.  You can view the article’s abstract by clicking here.  You will need the appropriate permissions to read the full text.   The article is based on a review of more than 50 documents from the grey literature relating to the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games in London.

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Conferences update

You can view all the presentations from the 2008 ITSA conference in Shanghai, including mine, by going to this web page.  The theme of the conference was ‘Globalisation, mega events and urban tourism’ and there are a wealth of useful case studies, theoretical perspectives and non-western viewpoints on tourism and events available to download as powerpoint files – some in English and some in Mandarin Chinese.  Unfortunately, the files are listed alphanumerically, so you might have to have a dig through to find material you are particularly interested in.

The presentations from the excellent ‘Developing tourist destinations’ seminar held in Aalborg last month will be up on the conference webpages soon along with pictures and I’ll post an update on here when they are available.  In the meantime, you can view my presentation below:

Memetics and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

You can download the full paper that we gave at the ITSA conference in Shanghai by clicking here.   You can also view our presentation below:

Memetics and the Cultural Olympiad

I will be giving a paper at the 2nd ITSA bi-annual conference on “Globalisation, mega-events and tourism”, 6-9th November in Shanghai.  The paper is the latest output from the research I have been carrying out with a colleague, Nikki MacLeod, into the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  In this paper, we set out our memetic framework for the conceptualisation of the Cultural Olympiad and the paper’s abstract is below:

 

 

“This paper proposes the development of a memetic framework for analysing and evaluating the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  A review of grey literature has revealed five recurring themes or memes (units of cultural transmission) associated with the Cultural Olympiad and the authors predict that they will be transmitted spatially, through planning and delivery processes and between the formal sectors of the Cultural Olympiad.  The paper proposes a methodology which includes a longitudinal study of three UK case studies in the four year run-up to the 2012 Olympics. These case studies (London Borough of Greenwich, Canterburyand Durham) will be the subject of quantitative and qualitative analysis which the authors hope will reveal valuable insights into the frequency, transmission and longevity of the identified memes.  The memetic framework proposed may provide future guidance for the planning and evaluation of public projects both within and outside the Olympic realm.”

 

A memetic understanding of the Cultural Olympaid for the 2012 games

This presentation explains some research that a colleague and I are carrying out into the Cultural Olympiad being planned for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.  It contains some brief notes on a memetic framework we are developing as a way of engaging with the Cultural Olympiad as an evolving system with a heritage and a future beyond 2012,  and some ideas about the next stages of the research.