Cultural programming at Tokyo 2020: the impossible Olympic festival city?

IOC website screenshot | Olympic Agora (Aug 2021) The Tokyo 2020 Games will be remembered as the Games without a live audience. They will be talked about as the ‘Covid Games’ that were forced to exclude spectators and collective gatherings. The sporting competition field was protected to the best of the organisers’ ability — and …

Giant inflatables and flying dancers. Olympic art has always turned heads.

In the days before the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony, people were treated to the sight of a giant head floating over the city. Entitled Masayume, this oversized balloon installation by Japanese artist collective Me, was part of the Tokyo Tokyo Festival], as an arts response to the Olympic Games.  Art has long accompanied the arrival …

‘Let Space Speak’ | Tokyo 2020 Opening Ceremony

This Olympic Opening Ceremony offers poignant images of what is ‘not’ there One of the things that struck me the most during Japan’s 2016 Forum of Sport & Culture was a talk by a Japanese living national treasure on the importance of empty space – and nothingness – in Japanese culture. The opening ceremony of Tokyo 2020 has had …

London 2012 Cultural Olympiad Evaluation

Photo: Beatriz Garcia during Piccadilly Circus Circus, part of the London 2012 Festival In November 2011, the major stakeholders in the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival commissioned Dr Beatriz Garcia and her team at the  Institute of Cultural Capital (ICC) to produce an assessment of the multiple impacts of hosting the Cultural Olympiad. The final …

Liverpool in danger of losing its World Heritage status

Find below a report making the case for Liverpool to retain its World Heritage Site (WHS) award. The city has been on the UNESCO WHS endangered list since 2012 due to the proposed construction of the Liverpool Waters project. Many discussions have ensued over the years, with UNESCO agreeing to offer the city an extension …

Olympic Cities of Culture

The CC:RO has documented the evolution of the official Olympic Games cultural programme since it was launched in 1912, and Olympic Movement cultural policy frameworks since their first establishment in 1906. Fieldwork has been conducted in situ at Olympic Games editions since 1992. This work has taken place in collaboration with the Olympic Studies Centre …

European Capitals of Culture

The CC:RO has documented the experience of European Capital of Culture (ECoC) hosts since the initiative’s launch in 1985. Research frameworks have been devised and data has been gathered from 60 host cities in 30 European countries between 1985 and the present. This work has taken place within the Centre for Cultural Policy Research (University …

What Future for Festivals? Report

“We need festivals – now more than ever!” declares Salzburg Global report on the current state and what comes next for the beleaguered sector, post-pandemic   Find here access to the Final Report of the 2020 Salzburg Global Seminar , co-curated by our Director, Dr Beatriz Garcia, and dedicated to exploring the question: 'What Future …

The Culture and Education District, London

The Institute of Cultural Capital conducted this scoping study for the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2017. The study assessed the value of the emerging Culture and Education District (CED, rebranded as East Bank since 2018) in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This is a case study of a 'creative clustering’ in the making. …

When the Games can’t go on

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games have been postponed. It is only the fourth time this happens in 124 years, the only three previous occasions being due to World War I and World War II. The global virus pandemic of 2020 is forcing a halt on all international sport and cultural mega-events and this …