Cultural Olympiad
Time to get moving on Vancouver’s next big party: Year-long arts program, marking city’s 125th birthday, proposed as a cure for Olympic hangover
When Vancouver turns 125 next year, local theatre visionary Norman Armour wants to make sure the occasion is marked properly, with a cultural program that builds on the success of this year’s Cultural Olympiad. “It’s rare that any city that’s had the Olympics or one of the European cities of culture has had the opportunity [...]
Why Nixon in China was worth the risk: Producing an expensive, elaborate contemporary opera during a recession tested the company and community
There has been much debate recently about the effectiveness and long-term benefits of the Cultural Olympiad, especially in a time of significant cuts in provincial arts funding. The irony of this timing, and the fear it has created, is much on the minds of arts administrators, artists, audiences and community leaders across the province. Vancouver [...]
Olympic legacy not measured solely on economic benefits say Liberals
The B.C. Liberals say the Olympic games were about more than making money, while the opposition maintains that the government failed to take full advantage of the opportunity. The Olympic’s economic impact may not be fully felt for more than a decade according to a new report released by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, one of the largest auditing [...]
Cultural Olympiad: The lure and the legacy
What will be the legacy of the Cultural Olympiad? Some effects will be tangible and immediate, such as its impact on the International Olympic Committee and other Olympic Games organizing committees. Others will be more intangible and may take months or years to come to fruition. “I don’t want to put words in (the IOC’s) [...]
Cultural Olympiad: Reflections from some arts and entertainment community leaders
Barb Clausen: Co-producer of DanceHouse “With the help of the Cultural Olympiad, DanceHouse brought in Batsheva’s Deca Dance for the 2009 Cultural Olympiad and Crystal Pite’s Dark Matters and Marie Chouinard’s The Golden Mean (Live) this year for the Cultural Olympiad. “Without the Cultural Olympiad’s help, DanceHouse could not have afforded to bring in Batsheva and [...]
These shows are not about being disabled: People are just people and we just want to show what regular people are up to,’ creator of Spine says
Spine is about a guy going through a midlife crisis. Rick is about a teenager who likes to fish. Spatial Theory is about the diverse influences on an artist. They are not, their creators stress, about being disabled. The Paralympic Games begin tomorrow, and art exploring the disability experience is very much in evidence in Vancouver’s continuing [...]
Olympic visitors also lined up to view art
The Vancouver Art Gallery drew 95,000 visitors over the 17 days of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the highest attendance in its history. Visitors were lured by free admission, courtesy of the B.C. government, and two blockbuster shows — Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man and Visions of British Columbia: A Landscape Manual. Lineups [...]
2012 planners impressed with Vancouver’s Cultural Olympiad
Vanoc’s integration of culture into the 2010 Olympic sports program has been singled out for praise by the man in charge of the Cultural Olympiad and ceremonies for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Bill Morris said Burke Taylor, executive producer of Vancouver’s 2010 Cultural Olympiad, and his team have integrated the cultural side of [...]
Six More Great Days of Cultural Olympiad Events
“There’s this ‘one never knows what’s going to happen’ aspect to street performing,” says busker Neil Burnett, leaning on his Celtic harp after his Sunday afternoon performance on Granville Island. “You begin to develop superstitions, sensitivities to moon phases… then a crowd arrives like a flock of birds.” He’s describing musical spaces, but by now, [...]
Dance, music give kids an Olympic voice Kinesphere combines talent of budding musicians and dancers as part of the cultural Olympiad
The true meaning of the words “arts umbrella” opened up under sunny skies on the weekend as Arts Umbrella celebrated a first. For the first time in 30 years, separate disciplines at the popular Granville Island non-profit centre for educating youth in the arts joined forces to present a co-creation. Kinesphere is less than 15 [...]
Cultural Olympiad: Vancouver’s 2010 arts and cultural festival will touch 1.5 million people
Unlike many of the tens of thousands of visitors to Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics, Gerard Roxburgh hasn’t come to the west coast for sports. He’s here for the culture. Roxburgh knows that makes him unusual. The Toronto resident admits that unless someone gives him tickets to a hockey game, he probably won’t be [...]
World’s interest in Cultural Olympiad arts is mixed
If all eyes are on Vancouver, then there’s no doubt that some of them will be casting their gaze on the city’s Cultural Olympiad. Before the Games had even started, the Vancouver Art Gallery had hosted a slew of media outlets from around the globe, including a TV crew from Guangzhou, China, that spent hours [...]
Olympics Cash and Vancouver’s Cutural Community Lines are being drawn between those who accepted Cultural Olympiad money, and those who refused it
Wednesday morning, as people gathered at the WISE hall for the first Olympics Resistance Summit, I had a conversation about the arts in this city that had me thinking all day. It’s not that what was talked about was new, or particularly revelatory. It was the tangible feeling that lines are being drawn. On one [...]
Games’ cultural legacy will disappear if arts funding cuts continue
It’s good news Bramwell Tovey will stay another five years conducting the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The maestro took over a faltering orchestra, steered it to a Grammy, a critically acclaimed tour through China and proved classical music has a place in Vancouver’s cultural life. Similarly positive is the success of the Cultural Olympiad, the dozens [...]
On with the show: What exactly is the point of the Cultural Olympiad?
One of the most infamous performances in Vancouver music history happened at Expo 86. The world’s fair featured a showcase of local music talent, and the first act onstage was the Vancouver punk group Slow, which had been labelled “brilliantly out of control” in Expo bumf. But the band’s performance evidently offended some fairgoers; management [...]
