London 2012 Festival
Everything is hotting up now as we get ever closer to the 2012 we have been talking about for the past couple of years.
The latest news is how London will be going all out for the London Festival to mark the Olympics which start on the 27th July which will be marked by a nationwide ringing of bells, part of an artwork by Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed.
This will then mark the start of thousands of events in the capital like free music festivals headlined by the likes of Leona Lewis to the most ambitious Shakespeare show ever staged, taking place across the capital with 10million tickets going free. There will also be a World Shakespeare Festival, the Poetry Parnassus and Big Dance as key events within the festival.
Mayor Boris Johnson said: ‘We want to create a summer like no other, so that Londoners and visitors, wherever they are in the capital, come away feeling they have been part of something exhilarating, a unique moment in time.’
The festival, the culmination of the four-year Cultural Olympiad, will run from June 21 until September 9.
The event is now taking speed and coming together fast for something that some thought was overly ambition. Damon Albarn, Daniel Barenboim, Cate Blanchett, Carol Ann Duffy, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Jude Law and Mike Leigh have all already been confirmed as taking part and recent additions to the schedule include pop-up performances of Shakespeare by Jerusalem star Mark Rylance and a major retrospective of the work of Yoko Ono. There will also be top designers taking part including Stella McCartney, Sarah Burton and Dame Vivienne Westwood are joining forces with leading visual artists such as Marc Quinn, Jeremy Deller and Dinos Chapman who will be creating new work for another exhibition.
Yoko Ono said: ‘I am very excited. Every time I come to the city, I feel it bursting with energy and creativity and 2012 will really be the year when London celebrates.’
