City News

A spectacular sound and light show; MOBO award winning artist, Soweto Kinch; 100 young dancers; and music from Orchestra of the Swan, Black Voices and Bombay Baja Brass Band, will be among the performances that will kick start a four year celebration of culture and creativity across the West Midlands, as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, on Friday 26 September.

Other performers include: Hereford Courtyard’s Youth Theatre; all-male hip hop dance troupe 2fAcEd DaNcE and Warwickshire’s Motionhouse Dance. Paul Manning, TeamGB Cycling Gold medal winner who heralds from the West Midlands will also make a guest appearance.

The ticketed event, hosted by Advantage West Midlands, the West Midlands Leadership Group for 2012 and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, will be the regional launch for the Cultural Olympiad ‘Open Weekend’. The Open Weekend will also see some 40 events taking place across the West Midlands ranging from the opening up of rarely seen natural habitats, to outdoor theatrical performance, storytelling and an urban cycling display set to light and music. The event will also be the launch pad for A Celebration of Imagination –  a campaign to celebrate the anniversaries of the region’s most prominent innovators from Darwin to the Mini throughout 2009 – and A Century of Olympic Posters, a national touring exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, presented by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in conjunction with the Wenlock Olympian Society.
 
The Cultural Olympiad Open Weekend is a nationwide weekend of over 500 cultural events to celebrate the beginning of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.  

Highlights in the West Midlands programme for Open Weekend include (for full breakdown see Appendix):

• Lighting up of iconic buildings and monuments; dance; music; an exhibition of Olympic Posters; rare access to the largest natural lake in the Midlands; a World Heritage Site Festival; a new sculpture trail and a trail throughout Much Wenlock telling the tale of Dr William Penny Brookes, the founder of the Modern Olympic Games, in Shropshire.
• A major survey of work by acclaimed British artist Martin Creed; behind the scenes tour of the BBC; a ‘speckled monster’ theatre performance; and dramatic stories told in the usually hidden ruins of a castle in Birmingham.
• Urban cycling performance set to music using acrobatics, dance and digital art celebrating Coventry as the home of the modern cycle; lighting up the Royal Shakespeare Theatre as it undergoes its transformation; an exhibition of Jack B Yeats’ portrayal of circus and travelling fairs; stories and puppet shows in Coventry and Warwickshire.
•Opening up of a rare Norman Deer Park set in Capability Brown landscape and dramatic outdoor theatrical events using lanterns, procession, song, theatre and film and fire sculpture in Herefordshire & Worcestershire.
• Talks and story-telling by leading authors and poets; a community arts trail inspired to benefit health and wellbeing; opening up of usually private arts studios; a cultural ‘triathalon’; a local history fair; behind the scenes glimpses of ‘hidden’ museum and archive collections and the lighting up of one of England’s grandest town chapels  in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire.
• Spectacular light and laser show; films featuring great Midlands sporting achievements between 1930 and 1970; a theatrical journey into the history of the Corner Shop in a disused shop; contemporary arts exhibition and a 1940’s tea dance in The Black Country.