the benign (one hopes) borg festival

Now. Far be it from me to cast any aspersions, nor would I wish to come across as sceptical or let alone cynical and as everybody who knows me knows I am a great fan of the London Olympics (I only wish I had got some tickets...) and I welcome, nay embrace the idea of a Cultural Olympiad or the London 2012 Festival, as it is now called.

Furthermore, I get the point of making it as 'inclusive' as possible, I can see the rationale of letting it happen all over the country, I understand the organisers' evident desire to appeal to everyone somehow, whilst trying hard to feature some paragons of well-respected excellence, and I applaud the undertaking of making some 10 million or so free tickets and 'opportunities' (by which, presumably, are meant general open admissions) available.

So far so good.

But is it just me, or has this Festival somehow managed to simply absorb, like a big - benign, one hopes, but in its encompassing reach still somewhat troubling - organism, everything it even vaguely comes in touch with. I'm not suggesting for one moment that any of the events listed in the official programmes tried to resist, but if, say, hypothetically, they had, would they even have been able to?

The Festival kicked off with appropriate fanfare in a place I'd never heard of called Bowness-on-Windermere, on Midsummer Night, 21st June, and a big concert with fireworks in Stirling. I imagine these, like many others until it officially closes with the end of the Paralympics on 9th September, were events specifically created for this series and they probably wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for London 2012.


Less obvious, though, how the BBC Proms 2012 feature here. The Proms have been going for well over a hundred years and it is safe to assume that they would have happened again this year, Olympiad or no Olympiad. But at least they fall just about within the dates of the London 2012 Festival.

Not quite so with Lucian Freud Portraits, on all accounts a tremendous retrospective looking over 70 years of one of Britain's finest artists. This opened at the National Portrait Gallery on 9th February and closed again on 27th May, very nearly a whole month before the London 2012 Festival even started. Einstein on the Beach, the mesmerising Philip Glass masterpiece, directed by Rober Wilson: been and gone at the Barbican, in May. The inspired Globe to Globe season of Shakespeare interpretations from across the world: April and May.

Ongoing, regular, seasonal or year round: Poems on the Underground. The Serpentine Pavilion (this year another triumph, by Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron). Any number of performances at the Edinburgh International Festival, the National Theatre and the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Don't get me wrong: these are all wonderful initiatives, installations and events and I have no hesitation in endorsing them, praising them even! I just hope they all got a fair amount of money out of the Olympics because otherwise it would be hard to see why they should be so roundly appropriated by London 2012.

I imagine the idea is to just put everything that's happening culturally across the country this year under the banner of London 2012, to make sure we all appreciate that what we've got here is a good thing. Trouble with that is only that we know what we've got here is a good thing. Both the Olympics and everything that's happening culturally across the country. But while come 2013 the Olympics will be gone, the country will still be here, and so we better make sure there'll be some money then and into future years to keep these good things happening...

The London 2012 Festival website

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