Welcome everyone, I'm Justine Simons, I'm the Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries in London and also it's a great privilege to be the founder and chair of the World Cities Culture Forum. And welcome everyone today, we have an incredible group of people joining us on this webinar today. We have over 200 people from 20 cities around the world. and it's a bit of a World Cities tradition to do a roll call.
So welcome to all of our World Cities Culture Forum partner cities. You are London, Paris, LA, New York, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Nanjing, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Toronto, Vienna, and Zurich. And also a very warm welcome to our new friends joining us on this webinar from Auckland, from Bilbao. from Johannesburg, from Kampala and Fort Portal in Uganda, from Kiev, from Mexico City, from Nairobi and from Porto.
So welcome everyone. So just a word about the World Cities Culture Forum before we kick off. We are a global leadership network and a not-for-profit and our patron is the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
We are 40 cities around the world and we span six continents and our mission is to unlock the power of culture in big cities. We talk about culture as a golden thread, something that can impact across all aspects of City Alive, whether that's health, community, infrastructure, planning, tourism, events and many more. How do we do that? We do that by coming together and sharing our best ideas. We talk about ourselves as an IP-free zone because it's always a surprise to us how much we have in common and the challenges we face are easier to crack if we're doing it together.
We have three major areas of work. Number one, every year we run a global summit in one of our partner cities. This year it's in the fabulous city of Sao Paulo.
Number two, we put together a really great set of... data which builds a portrait of culture in big world cities. And then the third element of our work is leadership exchange and that is our focus today. We have a leadership exchange program which is generously funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and this allows us to go really much deeper into a particular area of priority that is a common priority for a number of cities.
It's a physical exchange, it's leadership in action. And we're sharing what we are learning together. Next week here in London, we'll be hosting a whole team of people from New York City to talk about cultural infrastructure, how we're saving our infrastructure, how we're supporting it.
And today is a moment to focus on culture and the Olympics. And Paris and L.A. have been exchanging through this program what they are developing, what they are learning, what their challenges and opportunities are through the Olympic Games.
So finally, just to say a really big thank you to all of you for joining. 200 people is an incredible level of interest in this topic. We've got people from our policy backgrounds, academia, and also from institutions and a lot of individuals. And my biggest thanks really goes to Bloomberg Philanthropies for the support for this programme. Without you, it wouldn't be possible.
Very big thanks to Kate Levin, particularly, who has been a long-term collaborator with the World Cities Culture Forum. Forum and was in fact there at the Genesis almost as a co-founder when we first met together when she was Commissioner for Culture in New York City. And she is also an awesome moderator.
And with that, over to you, Kate. Thanks so much, Justine. I'm feeling the pressure to be awesome, but I join you in welcoming this extraordinary group of cities and look forward to introducing our wonderful panelists. Why World Cities Culture Forum and Cultural Olympiads? Well, part of the reason is that a number of cities in our network have had the privilege of hosting this event, including London, Sydney, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Barcelona.
And two are preparing to do that now, Los Angeles and Paris. But our time together today won't just be spent focusing on the issues and challenges of hosting the Olympic Games. We hope the conversation today will spur lots of thinking about the way cultural Olympiads foreground a number of key strategic issues that face everybody working on culture in cities. What's the role of municipal leadership in supporting the sector? How do you advocate for the sector with a lot of competing interests?
How does culture contribute to a city's reputation? or brand? How do you negotiate the complex relationship between different parts of the sector, including different levels of government, for example, national, regional, local, different sources of funding, and above all, artists and organizations that service local communities versus those that are maybe more nationally and internationally recognized. Cultural Olympiads foreground all of those challenges and opportunities. And as I think all of us would agree, activating the creative sector's powerful capacity for creating social cohesion and productive change is something we can all deserve to get better at.
So the timing of this session, Los Angeles and Paris are in the middle of their leadership exchange. Paris has visited Los Angeles. Los Angeles will visit Paris in June. The Paris Games are a year away. The Los Angeles Games are five years away.
So this is a conversation very much in development. and could benefit from everybody's input. What we're going to do in our time together today is hear short presentations from five Olympic cities in the World Cities Culture Forum network.
We're going to be traveling back in time from Los Angeles, which is hosting the 2028 Games, to Sydney, which hosted in 2000. We're going to have a discussion with our panelists, and then we're going to take your questions. So please ask them by following the on-screen introductions. instructions.
To give us some essential context, we are so pleased to have with us Angelita Teo. She is the director of the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage. And before taking that role, Angelita ran the National Museum of Singapore, and prior to that, the annual Singapore Heritage Festivals.
So in addition to her current Olympic responsibilities, she's deeply experienced in the management of culture in cities. So Angelita, let me ask you to give us some context for today's conversation. Help us understand the modern cultural Olympiad and where it came from.
Hi, Kate. Thank you for having me. It's a great opportunity for me to provide a little bit of a background understanding of the cultural Olympiad, as well as what it means to host cities today and for the Olympic movement as a whole. The cultural Olympiad started way back with the founding of the modern Olympics. And it's always been part of the Olympic movement to blend sport, culture, and education as one.
And it was always about building the holistic person, both in mind, as well as in body, which is why culture has always been a critical aspect of the work we do. For host cities, with the way the games are being organized today, the Cultural Olympiad helps to provide opportunities to create legacy projects, helps to engage their audiences before the Games, during the Games and even after the Games as well. And with culture, I think the long-lasting benefit of hosting Olympic Games can be stretched out over more than just a few weeks of the Games.
Maybe I will also help by explaining a few terms that we use a lot in the Olympic movement, which is the the OCOGS, which is the Olympic Games Organising Committee, which is set up by both the city as well as the National Olympic Committees of the cities that are involved. And it is with the OCOGS that the IOC works very closely with, both for the games as well as cultural and educational initiatives. Thanks so much, Angelica.
I'm frozen. Okay. No, you're unfrozen.
Okay. You are always with us. Thank you so much.
So with that as background, we're now going to hear from our colleagues in Los Angeles planning for the 28 Games. They are a twosome. Daniel Tarica is general manager of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. And Kristen Sakota is Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
Of course, they're not a twosome in their day jobs because they have very separate responsibilities. And I'm going to ask Daniel to start us off by talking about his agency. Wonderful. Thanks so much, Kate.
And thank you to the World Cities Culture Forum and to Bloomberg Philanthropies for your support of the leadership exchange between the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County and Paris for the Cultural Olympiad. Thanks also to Paris, Saint-Saint-Denis and all of our other cities here with us today. I'm really looking forward to hearing about our conversation.
I'm Daniel Tarica, the General Manager for the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and I'm honored to join you today. We're the city's local arts agency, and our mission is to strengthen the quality of life in Los Angeles by stimulating and supporting arts and cultural activities, ensuring public access to the arts for residents and visitors alike. As the official bid holder for the City of Los Angeles, its leadership has approached its partnership with LA28 based on a set of guiding principles to structure our involvement in the games. These core values will be implemented through an equity lens with an innovative and community centered approach including diversity and equity, sustainability, resiliency, community engagement, and belonging. All of these provide a huge opportunity for us in the city and also for the region in arts and culture.
As the Department of Cultural Affairs, we'll be upholding these values throughout the development and planning process for the Cultural Olympiad leading up to it during the Cultural Olympiad and the legacy beyond. and these values of course go beyond our city limits as well. I look forward throughout the discussion to be able to tell you a little bit more about the agency as well.
Thanks Kate. Thanks so much Daniel. Kristin over to you.
Sure. Hi everybody. It's great to be with you. Kristin Sakota and I'm proud to serve as the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. We too in the United States cultural policy parlance would be called a local arts agency.
the entity that on behalf of LA County's government supports arts and culture. Our mission is big and broad to advance arts, culture, and creativity all throughout Los Angeles County with a charge to create comprehensive program and policy in arts and culture. One of the things that we'll share more about in our work that has really become a defining lens for us across all of our work and really across the region is the lens and the value and the practice, really, of cultural equity and inclusion.
We believe, of course, that everybody should have access to the arts, but also we understand that there has been historical inequity in artistic and cultural forms or in which ones were represented or recognized and in resources. And so everyone, just like in the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, everyone should have access to the arts. Everyone should have the opportunity to contribute and participate in the cultural life of the community and to have the opportunity to exchange with others.
And so this has really been catalytic and drives at the heart in many ways of the conversations around the Olympic Games as well, including as we're going to explore the relationships and the strategic coordination and partnerships between the city, the county. and so many others in advancing this in the region. And in fact, even those phrases of the cultural equity and inclusion, we contributed to the original bid for LA to have the Olympics.
So very excited to be here and very excited to build on the LA-Paris leadership exchange. And thanks to everyone for having us. So if we could pull up the slide deck for LA City and County. Some folks listening to this may be confused.
You have a city, you have a county. But if we could go to the third slide here, this may seem very familiar. Next one, please. To a number of us, most cities are, in fact, metro areas.
There's a central city and there are adjacent jurisdictions. And frankly, if you're an audience member or an artist, you don't particularly look at the boundaries written in the sidewalk. So part of what Daniel and Kristen are charged with doing is collaborating in an extremely close way on delivering the games. I think, as Daniel said, the city of L.A. holds the bid, but many of the events will be taking place in the county.
So, Kristen, can you speak to this map and just fill us all in on what this represents for you? Sure, absolutely. And just to start, you know, it's interesting because we all swim in this every day, but for those joining us, you know, you might also think, well, this is a whole webinar on arts and culture. Like, why aren't we talking about dance forms and, you know, and things like that?
But because I like to say for everyone who sits on the public sector side as a local arts agency or a funder or others, we are essentially a reflection of. and in service to the jurisdiction where we reside and that we serve. And so place matters. So for Los Angeles County or the Los Angeles region, we are the largest county in the United States by population, over 10 million people. It's also very vast and diverse geography of over 4,000 square miles of coastal communities, urban communities, mountain and desert as well, suburban as well.
Very diverse people. over 200 languages spoken and a really robust creative economy and creative sector that of course we serve as well with so many organizations as well as the Hollywood or digital screen industries and so many more and so this is really the broader context. Within it there are 88 incorporated cities and Daniel can speak to of course the largest among them which is Los Angeles City.
There are also what we call over 100 unincorporated areas, which means that they're not officially a city, although if you walked through there, you might not know. And they're the board of supervisors who are elected to lead and run the county of Los Angeles are legally the mayor in the unincorporated areas. And they also have jurisdiction.
So you could go to an event and be at a specific arts organization, but also be in the city of Los Angeles or Santa Monica or Pasadena. or Long Beach or any of those other ones, and at the same time be in a county supervisorial district, all in one. And so it's very complex, very diverse, and takes a lot of strategy to move. So Daniel, do you want to speak to this map? And as Kristen has said, Los Angeles by itself is the fourth largest city in the United States.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Kate. And thanks, Kristen.
As the largest city in the county, we're a city of 4 million residents and about 40 million visitors annually. So the city takes up about 470 square miles, containing about, it's about 11.5% of the area and approximately 30%, 39% of the population of LA County. As a city, we're both geographically and culturally diverse with more than 200 languages spoken and cultural representation from across the globe. The city of Los Angeles is governed by a mayor and 15 city council members.
And on average, DCA serves about 3.4 million people a year. building the capacity of our city's artists, arts organizations, and providing opportunities for youth in our communities. Our funding source comes through the transient occupancy tax, so we're funded at up to about one percent of that tax providing funding for the city to provide arts and culture.
And through our service delivery models, we support our city's most underserved populations with arts education and programming, as well as our arts and cultural sector. and we're looking forward to the 2028 Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad as a way to further strengthen these efforts. So to that end, why don't we look at the next slide which outlines the ways in which both of your agencies serve the creative sector as well as your citizens.
Daniel, do you want to talk a little bit about Cultural Affairs and then Kristen come on in around the county. Thanks Kate. So the Department of Cultural Affairs builds capacity of the Los Angeles arts and cultural sector through several service delivery models. We create and support arts programming, support our city's most underserved communities, and maximize relationships with artists and arts and cultural non-profit organizations to provide excellent service through cultural equity in neighborhoods throughout the city.
So we do this in five distinct areas. We do this through our grants administration program, in which we provide grant support to LA's rich and diverse arts and cultural organizations and individual artists. in a variety of disciplines and categories including dance, music, media, and visual arts, as well as literature, educational program, residencies, and professional fellowships. And not only do these funds generate jobs and lift up artists and arts organizations, they also provide a diverse portfolio of high quality, free, or low-cost services for our residents and visitors of all ages.
We also do it through our marketing development design and digital research program and division. in which we work with local, state, national, and international arts organizations to promote cultural awareness and increase arts education in Lele's communities. We also market the city's cultural events and produce calendars and cultural guides for the city's heritage months. Through our community arts division, this is really one of our boots on the ground divisions that is deeply embedded and in some works in support of our city's communities through our works in our art centers, galleries, and historic sites.
In these efforts, the city offers high quality instruction in the arts, produces solo and group arts exhibitions, creates outreach programs for underserved populations, develops special initiatives for young people, and promotes numerous events during the year that celebrate the cultural diversity of the communities that we serve. The division also engages in historic conservation efforts and conducts educational tours at our historic sites. And our galleries present high quality exhibitions reflective of the diversity of Los Angeles. And lastly, actually not lastly, one a few more, I want to talk about Performing Arts Division. And our Performing Arts Division supports creative placemaking and keeping, community building and social cohesion.
through a range of performing arts and education programs through DCA's theaters. Our theaters are also one of the city's methods to offer affordable space to artists and arts organizations when affordable space is so difficult to find. And last but certainly not least, I want to talk about our public art division.
And DCA significantly supports artists and cultural projects through several distinct types of programs through its public arts division, each committed to the creation and maintenance of art within the public realm. The division supports the city's murals program and also commissions artists to create public art and approves the creation and their presentation of site-specific public art projects throughout the city of LA. And through all of this we work to serve our city's residents and visitors and we look forward to using the service model to help continue building towards the Cultural Olympiad. Thank you.
Great, I'll pick it up from here. So one of the ways of course that we think about expanding access to the arts or cultural equity and inclusion for all of our communities, residents and visitors is of course to invest in programs that reflect the diversity of the Los Angeles County region and to have programs and strategies that can ensure we have a thriving, robust, equitable arts and cultural sector. So our core programs are essentially strategies. for achieving on that mission.
And I'll just lightly touch on some of them here. So grant making is, of course, a core of what we do. And through our grants division, we are funding hundreds of nonprofit arts organizations of every artistic discipline, every budget size you can imagine all over the geographic region of Los Angeles County.
We're also actually funding nonprofits that are rooted in social service and social justice, but who have a dedicated arts. program. We also commission individual artists for our civic art program, so public art and building on LA County's capital project. At any given time we might have 10 million dollars or whatever it might be in various stages of civic art commissions as well as an ordinance for private development for them to ensure that there's arts for all of our community and temporary initiatives as well.
In arts education we have a division dedicated to ensuring access to arts education for all youth. with various strategies to work with all the school districts all across the county, so really embedding arts in the school system as well as support for teachers and schools and educators, but also investing in arts education including healing and trauma-informed arts education for youth in underserved communities and communities with a high intersection or high involvement in various kinds of systems including the justice system. We also have a small but mighty research and evaluation team.
We believe in data, so working with WCCF and Bloomberg is great in that regard. So we produce original reports for the field and evaluate our own programs. In creative career pathways, expanding access to those jobs and careers in the arts, we have a long-standing paid arts internship program for college students, as well as establishing Creative Careers Online, a new platform for young folks to find out about creative jobs and additional emerging pathways there. professional development for the field, whether they are individuals or organizations, as well as technical assistance and capacity building.
And then cross-sector art strategies are really the ways that we are continuing to build with intentionality the connections between how do the arts show up and what role do they play in advancing civic life across various sectors. And so one of the key programs there is the Creative Strategist Artist in Residence Program placing artists in other non-arts departments like immigrant affairs, or like parks, library, mental health, to really help us devise strategies to address civic issues. And we continue to grow that area of our work.
Lastly, I just want to acknowledge that we are now the proud home of the Los Angeles City County Native American Indian Commission. And I've been partnering with them on supporting our Native communities and our local tribes. So we have two cultural agencies with a lot of muscle tone, a lot of programs that relate to each other and some significant differences as a platform for what's ahead. for the cultural Olympiad.
So now let's look at this issue of legacy, which is particularly interesting for Los Angeles because in the 1984 Olympics made a really big difference to the perception of the city. Many people still point to it as the moment when Los Angeles was fully recognized as a cultural capital beyond the film and TV industries. So let's take a look at the next slide around.
what kind of legacy you all are shooting for. Thanks, Kate. So it's an honor and a truly valuable model to see the continuing footprint of LA84 here in Los Angeles. And as we think about the legacy that we want the LA28 Olympics to leave, we know that the return on investment for arts and culture will be high, both for participants and audiences.
We want to make sure that this investment is made strategically so that the support will have a lasting impact for years to come. We want to use this opportunity to lift up our populations and provide a platform to tell their stories and recognize our history and our past through our indigenous communities in ways that will continue long beyond the games. We also want this time to support our city's young people, to inspire them through arts education and the Cultural Olympiad to truly create the next generation of leaders in arts and culture. Additionally, we want to take this time to deepen our investments and further promote and recognize the excellence that we have here in Los Angeles. Our legacy should carry that forward, building upon our cities and regions cultural capital that can be galvanized into a legacy of sustainable equitable growth in infrastructure, business, and long-term work that uses arts and culture to improve community health and wellness.
And I would just add, you know, that as the slide indicates, I think the Olympics for us are an opportunity and there's a lot of excitement and anticipation around them. We're in a unique situation. I don't think it's ever happened before.
We could ask Angelita. But where two cities have been identified for two back-to-back Olympics. So, right, Paris and L.A., where we have known this far in advance that Los Angeles would have the Olympics. And so folks are very excited, but also, of course, some folks are concerned that it could leave us, you know, with a drain on our attention for a number of years. And instead of.
focusing on real key needs or real advancements that we need. And so what I see here is an opportunity to leverage the excitement, the investment, and the activity of the Olympic Games to be able to bring folks together, to uplift literally the role of arts and culture and the visibility of arts and culture, especially in Los Angeles, where we have such a robust screen industry partners, as well as deeply rooted cultural organizations and artists to really bridge our diversity and belonging and share that nationally as well as globally, but also an opportunity to deepen our investment and to expand and improve our community's health. I will just say really briefly that when I walked onto my job in 2018 and there was a reception for me, new in my role, and literally one of the first questions I got.
in 2018 from someone in the audience at a welcome reception was, we just learned LA is going to host the Olympics in 2028. What are you going to do to make sure that our communities are not left behind? And this was someone coming from South LA, a predominantly Black community. And so I think we also have to be real that things have changed.
In 84, it may have been more about bringing international arts in and really being recognized as an arts region or city. And now we are one of the greatest places on earth for arts and culture and people know it. So we have been for a long time, but now people know it.
We are evolving. Our cultural organizations and landscape continues to grow. And so folks want to see engagement here. They want to see engagement with the existing artists and organizations and with the existing communities.
So I think it's really local first in many ways, as much as it's still global and international. So let's take a quick look at the final slide that you both prepared that I think offers candidly some of the the questions and aspirations but I do want to note that Erin Paley in the chat had asked Reminded us that the legendary Bob Fitzgerald had planned the 1984 Cultural Olympiad and asked about the role of the city and county. And I think this is one of the opportunities and tensions that hopefully we'll be discussing. What is the role of a municipal agency with regard to the OCOG, as Angelita mentioned, because the Olympics in cities are coordinated often by very intense.
private sector partnerships. So let's take a quick look. And Daniel, Kristen, any comments you want to share with us about the key actions you've outlined here? Yes, I'll just start by saying, you know, it's no accident that the very first bullet is about collaboration. I think collaboration, coordination and building partnerships is going to be key.
I think it might be key for every Olympics. But as we've talked about here, with so many relationships from the city of Los Angeles itself, which also holds the bid and the contract with the entity that produces the Olympics, LA28. They are the driver of actually delivering the games.
But then we know the activity takes place countywide. As I mentioned before, there are not only 88 cities, but there are several of them that have a local arts agency. They are also leaders in the arts in their field, as well as the Metro Transportation Agency or cultural institutions and other folks.
So collaboration. We play a role as a convener, convening even with arts philanthropy, as well as municipalities. So I think that is really going to be the key to our success and to be able to work together. And I'm excited to be demonstrating that with Daniel. Thanks.
And just to add to that, you know, when I think about the Olympics, I think about it kind of in three time periods. So I think about it in the time between now leading up to it, the Olympics and then the legacy beyond. And these are all huge opportunities for us to. to be able to invest.
And honestly, I agree completely with Kristin. This is an opportunity to collaborate, convene and bring folks together. And I think we will accomplish more through a region-wide approach and build upon our huge amount of knowledge we have within our arts and cultural sector and the expertise of our artists and arts organizations here in Los Angeles. So, and I think the other piece that I just wanna add, is as we as a city and our region are facing many different civic issues.
I think it's important, you know, as we look at homelessness on the forefront of our city's agenda and the larger work that we're trying to do in the sector of rebuilding and coming back from the pandemic. I think there are truly huge opportunities and I am hugely optimistic about the partnerships that we are developing again with the county, with LA28. and with all of our partners. Exactly.
And just briefly, just to pick up on a couple of those threads that Daniel mentioned, it is critical that we come back from the devastation of the pandemic on our arts and creative sectors. And so that's something we have been working on, and actually I'm really proud that by the end of this year, LA County Department of Arts and Culture will have moved $40 million of federal funds that came to our LA County that our Board of Supervisors allocated for us. as well as an additional 40 in partnership with philanthropy for the field.
And as Daniel mentioned, we really are interested in continuing to grow ways that arts address key issues like aging, homelessness, youth, justice reform. But we also have an opportunity to invest more deeply in our communications infrastructure, in our cultural infrastructure, and the field's readiness. And finally, to lift up things that will be amazing opportunities in the Olympics, like disability inclusion in the arts and through the arts.
sustainability and climate change. These are going to be key themes, I think, for the Olympics in LA and ways that we can uniquely position the arts to uplift those and advance them for 2028 and beyond. So I think if anybody didn't understand that culture is a team sport, now we do.
So thank you so much, our colleagues from Los Angeles. And I would like now to turn to Paris. Paris is hosting the Games a year from now and we are joined by Estelle Sicard, who's the Deputy Director of Cultural Affairs for the City of Paris. So Estelle, much tighter time frame. Tell us about your plans.
Good evening everyone from Paris. First of all, I really want to thank WCCF and Bloomberg Philanthropy for the leadership, leadership. exchange program and for inviting us today for this roundtable and I also want to thank warmly Christine Sakoda and Daniel Tarica from Los Angeles because I had the opportunity to to spend one week in Los Angeles with colleagues from Paris in the leadership exchange and I really want to thank them and all their team for their wonderful the wonderful time we spent with them. So, about Paris Cultural Olympiad, what can I say first?
Next slide, please. It tells a few words about what is the ambition of Paris. Of course, for us, Cultural Olympiad is a very important opportunity to showcase the the rich vitality and diversity of culture and art in Paris and to promote our artists and our exceptional know-how in many different fields and disciplines.
The challenge for us is to ensure that art and culture are a very strong symbol for the Olympic Games in Paris, which is highly expected at an international level and also by our cultural actors. our professionals and all the visitors. So we really want to propose popular events and also artistic excellency for this Olympic Games and multidisciplinarity and multiculturality.
The second point is that we are very engaged to build a concrete and strong legacy for the Olympic Games in terms of... art and culture and heritage. And Paris, in its candidacy, has built a plan which is called Olympic transformation to see how the Olympic and Paralympic Games can transform our city and benefit very widely to the inhabitants of the territory.
So our goals in this transformation plan is, of course, to transform the city. For instance, first of all, as a more sustainable city, we, of course, all question about plastic, food, climate change, water, swimming in the sea. We have also impact on... employment, which is very important, universal accessibility, reduce inequalities between men and women, between territories, and fight against discrimination.
We also have to improve access to sport and, of course, to art and culture, which is for us a very important issue. So that's why we have... built a very important program for this Olympiad, the Cultural Olympiad.
And the objective is really to accelerate our goals about a large access to culture for everyone, to improve inclusion and accelerate accessibility, and also to reinforce links between art, culture, sport and education. We have also a very important issue about metropolitan cooperation with the Seine Saint-Denis, which is a territory at the east of Paris, which will host a part of the game and with whom we are building a very important cooperation. So this Cultural Olympiad is for us really a way to...
to accelerate goals and to have a very durable and long-term impact on all these issues, very important for political, for cultural policy, such as also diversity, ecological transition, and also art in public space and innovation. So next slide, please. We have built our... Cultural Olympiad started in October 2021 with Nuit Blanche and it takes place over about three periods. It's three years before the Olympic Games with a lot of artistic and cultural projects.
During the Olympic Games we have a challenge of delivering an important programme of cultural and artistic experience. for visitors who will come to Paris. So that will be about from June to September 24 with emblematic projects and local festivities. And also after the games, because as I was saying, we are very, we want that some projects, some programs can continue after the Olympic Games and constitute the legacy for us for the games. So that's why our Cultural Olympiad aims at different audiences and actors.
very widely as creative parrots residents, young people, people of course who have little exposure to culture, disabled people and also international visitors and all the actors and workers of the cultural sectors. Next slide please. So this is some example of the programs and action, concrete action that we have built. for this Cultural Olympiad. So first of all we have different kind of programs such as education programs like residencies in secondary schools or stages for young people that propose both culture and sport practices.
We have also a lot of inclusion projects in the social field especially programs that support creation. and we have created for instance a new residency program in sport environment that we have created with Seine Saint-Denis and also Paris 24. We have also art projects in public spaces and all the departments of the cities, equipment, libraries, conservatories, museums are also very involved in this dynamic. and we have also exhibition programs. We also want to ask two quick questions for you. One, can you just quickly define for people what Nuit Blanche is?
Because many of us know, but I don't think everybody listening may understand. Sure, well, Nuit Blanche is our main cultural event. It has been existed for 20 years in Paris and it's for one night, free for everyone. We propose a lot of visual art projects in all the cities, all places of the cities, and in sometimes unknown places.
And we choose every year an artistic director, so we define his project with chosen artists on the team. So it's a major event for Paris, and there are also other cities in the world. also followed us as an organizer this Nuit Blanche.
So, and since 21 we have started proposing in Nuit Blanche events around art and sport to participate to this cultural Olympiad. So the next Nuit Blanche... For the last year, Nuit Blanche was in October and this year for the first time it will be in June, first weekend of June. It's Kitty Hartel, the artistic director, and in 24 there will be a very amazing Nuit Blanche dedicated to the Olympic Games and we are talking with Los Angeles about cooperation.
on the new blanche my second my second question was was what was your biggest takeaway from the exchange that you've had with los angeles uh so far well well what was interesting uh first of all we we had the opportunity to spend time and and to exchange on uh all all this issue we are even if we are quite different organization i think we share a lot of goals a lot of values uh we also had the opportunity to match LA28, LA84 too. So that was very interesting to exchange on all this issue. And what is interesting for us is that we take this opportunity also to think about concrete cooperation projects with Los Angeles, as I was saying, about probably Nuit Blanche and other projects. With Los Angeles and the city of Paris. Thank you so much.
We'll be back to you when we get into the larger conversation. Now we want to turn to Tokyo, which hosted the Olympics in 2021 under the deeply complicated circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the time difference, our World Cities Culture Forum colleagues from Tokyo aren't with us live, but Matsushita Hiroko, Senior Director for Digital Promotion of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Bureau of Citizens, Culture and Sport, has shared her reflections in this short video.
Good evening everyone. I am Matsushita Hiroko, Senior Director for Arts and Digital Promotion from Tokyo Metropolitan Government. I'd like to share Tokyo's insights from the Cultural Program for Tokyo 2020 and our Cultural Promotion after the Games. We had been holding our Cultural Program under the banner of Tokyo Tokyo Festival or TDF over the period from the end of the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016 until the conclusion of the Tokyo 2020 Games in 2021. We had key concepts such as promote unique culture of Tokyo where old meets new, boost participation and interaction among various groups of people, use new technology and expression to inspire artists and citizens.
With 34,000 artists, we held over 160,000 various activities accessible to all generations, all nationalities, and all with or without disabilities. We also improved accessibility in cultural facilities, which resulted the participation of 39 million people. Among those, I'd like to highlight the the TokyoTokyo Festival Special 13 as the core of Tokyo's cultural programs.
Together with internationally acclaimed artists, we brought 13 projects selected out of more than 2,000 proposals from a worldwide open call. For example, we held standout events such as Masayume, which overwhelmed the public by promoting a gigantic face of existing fashion. above the sky of tokyo where the world's biggest quadrennial gathering was held and super wall art tokyo which used two landmark buildings as a pair of huge campuses and exhibited total area of seven thousand square meters fabric art the constant gardeners skillfully utilized four robotic arms incorporated athletes movements to create views on a zen garden, reflecting the beauty of finely sharpened sensibilities. Each project was a stunning work that could combine the city's history and culture from Tokyo to the world and the past to the future. On the other hand, I cannot ignore that the Tokyo 2020 Games were the first ever to be postponed due to the outbreak of the pandemic.
Like other world cities, the impact to artists and cultural organizations in Tokyo was crucial. We widely supported creative activities to keep culture alive. Despite of such drawbacks, we successfully brought TTF with generous understandings and supports by artists and citizens, while staying safe at the same time by holding online streaming, workshops, etc. This is a great heritage for Tokyo.
We strongly believe these cultural legacies need to be passed on to the next generation. That's why we have established the Tokyo Cultural Strategy 2030 to realize the ideal state for Tokyo in the 2040s. It includes various cultural policies to stand with our citizens and artists. We hope this strategy will deliver well. being and dynamism to the city through arts and culture.
Moreover, we are expecting two international sport events in Tokyo in 2025, the World Athletic Championships and the DeFUX. We look forward to showcasing Tokyo's culture again in these opportunities. In TTF, more than 80% of the programs were universally accessible and about 6% 60% warm up but we intend to develop these areas better towards 2025. Diversity and inclusion will be the key to spread cultural attractions of Tokyo. Lastly, I'd like to offer our best wishes to people of Paris and Los Angeles that wonderful cultural programs will lead to the achievements of our cities.
Thank you. Thanks so much to Matsushita and our colleagues in Tokyo for that very generous and candid summary of what they experienced and were able to achieve. Now I'd like to go a little further back in time to London 2012, the games that sparked the creation of the World Cities Culture Forum.
Justine Simons, our WCCF chair, was head of culture for the mayor of London in the lead up. to the games and she is now deputy mayor for culture and creative industries so uh shows how you can get a promotion out of doing an amazing cultural olympiad um justine talk to us about your olympic experience thanks so much kate um so um i'm just going to rather than run through the big program because that'll take us all day what i thought i'd do is just share a few insights things that we learned things that were kind of guiding principles um you So first slide, please. Next slide, please. So number one, we heard about the kind of bringing together sports and culture and education.
But of course, sport is the big story. And one of the challenges, I think, for us and for lots of global cities when you host an Olympics is, you know, you want to shine a spotlight on your city in a positive way. But if you look at the images of Olympic Games.
You know, if you're running the 100 metres in London, in Paris, in Tokyo, in Sydney, in LA, it's usually the same shot. It's an athlete in a stadium. And that is one of the big challenges we were trying to square really, which is we're shining a big spotlight on our city. The spotlight is on the sport and the sport looks the same.
So we looked very carefully really at how we could use culture to reveal the landscape and the story of our city and tell that. through kind of strong visuals in that moment when all the eyes were trained on our city. So slide two.
Another challenge for us was tourism displacement. When we were bidding for the Olympics, you know, lots of people were talking about the benefits of tourism. Lots of people will come to your city.
Whereas, in fact, we learned quite quickly that the opposite happens. And in fact, a lot of tourists don't come to your city. when you host an Olympics because they think it's going to be a nightmare, all the hotels are booked up, it's going to be full of crowds and we were projecting that we'd lose about 375 million pounds which is about 500 million dollars I guess of tourism during the Olympics and the statistic we had was about 48% of the tourism benefit from hosting the Olympic Games happens after the Olympic Games. This was a a headline we used we saw um in uh one of our big um popular newspapers the olympics are the kiss of death for tourism um so with respect to our friends in new york people tend to not come to your city so that was a something that we were trying to kind of think about how we're going to use culture to promote our city during the games in order that after the games people come and visit and we can benefit from what is talked about as the olympic bounce Next slide.
Number three, tactical timing. So this is this idea of how do you balance the culture and the sport? You don't want to set them up in opposition.
So we were trying to think about how we could create a more kind of symbiotic relationship between those big Olympic stories. And so we focus a lot on tactical timing for the culture. So we. programmed a lot of culture immediately before the games kicked off and that was because you know when you host olympics all the world's media lands in your city and they land a few days in advance and there is no sport to report on so they're kind of busily finding stories finding problems revealing issues etc so we kind of tactically put some culture in that space and this was an example of that it was a i call it guerrilla millinery So we worked with our leading milliners to create bespoke headwear for lots of our statues and we put them on overnight so they were just a big reveal, a big kind of surprise and this here is a statue, it's Nelson's Column in the centre of Trafalgar Square and the hat he's wearing is made by Lock and Co and they're the oldest milliners in the world and they made his original hat so that story and that image was a great way I think to show the heritage and the contemporary design in the city. And it was, I think, in the end, the most downloaded image from the Olympic Media Center outside of the Hussein Bolt kind of classic big 100 meter dash.
Next slide. Oh, no, actually, back to that one. Sorry. The other thing about tactical time I was going to say is we also put we also put culture as well as at the beginning in the middle between the Olympics and the Paralympics because a little hiatus there. And then we went big at the end, which was a kind of whole city celebration at the end.
Next slide. Next point was storytelling. So we wanted to use the moment of the Olympics to tell our story.
We've heard that also from L.A. and Paris. And one of the things we tried to do is to kind of reimagine the iconic heritage and landscape of the city using culture. This is a choreographer called Elizabeth Streb, also known as the evil Knievel of contemporary dance.
And she choreographed incredible works that happened. on the landmarks of the city. Here she's kicking off with the dancers falling over and doing bungee jumping choreography on Millennium Bridge in front of St Paul's. And then if you go to the next slide this was her finale piece which was in the spokes of the London Eye.
And this piece I'm showing you too because one of the things we were trying to do is be creative about the budget and there's never enough money to go around. And one of the things that often you have to do as an Olympic city is a thing called city dressing. You have to kind of beautify the city, make it look and feel like a celebration is happening in the city, put up flags and bunting. And we looked at this bunting budget, the city dressing, and said, actually, if we think differently about that, we could actually dress some of the city through culture. And in fact, that would be more impactful.
And that's what this program was all about. using the bunting budget to commission Elizabeth Streb to, you know, celebrate and reveal the icons in the city. And it did deliver because we got a lot of front pages on lots of the newspapers. It did kind of capture attention and it showcased the city in a way that we really wanted to. Next slide.
Another thing for us was that the Olympics is in your city. There's 11 million people in our city. And they've all contributed to it through their taxes. They've all coped with the disruption of it through the road closures.
And not everyone can get a ticket to the games. There's not enough tickets to go round. So we were very mindful that we wanted to share that Olympic celebration with all of our citizens.
And so the cultural program created a really brilliant vehicle for that. And we had a big cultural festival citywide in every single one of our 30. to Boers, over 5,000 events, it reached about 7 million people. And that was really important because it just spread the Olympic love and the celebration, it felt like a kind of, it felt like something was happening that was positive and fun and it drew communities together in the city.
And one of the interesting things about this festival, the city-wide activation, was that when we looked at the evaluation, the demographic breakdown of the festival, in terms of the audiences, was an exact match. of the demographic profile of Londoners themselves, which is very hard to achieve normally through a cultural festival. So we had genuinely reached the people in the city. Christine, is that really Stonehenge as a bouncy castle? Yeah, so this is a project by...
That's a cultural contribution by itself, just want to say that. It is, yeah, yeah. So this is a project by the artist Jeremy Deller.
And he said, you know, I said to him, what would you like to do? What's your... idea in your back pocket because most artists have always got a dream idea and he said I would really like to recreate an exact replica of Stonehenge as a bouncy castle. Stonehenge is a famous prehistoric monument which is 5,000 years old so and actually he was kind of interested in how you could just have a bit of fun you know the Olympics and government you know we can get we can take ourselves a bit seriously and he said you know listen no people who can't laugh at themselves are in trouble.
we've got to be able to kind of bounce around and fall over and this project went all around the city and then it went on a national tour and then it went on an international tour so it was a proper hit a proper legacy. All right, next slide, nearly there. So just to wrap on all of those things, we were looking at culture to reach all of our communities and share the kind of Olympic celebration. We were looking to, you know, make the most of the global media stage, that spotlight on the city. We were looking to prevent the tourism displacement that comes with the Olympics and benefit from that in the Olympic bounce thereafter.
We wanted to test... tell a fresh story about London through culture, similar from LA. We wanted to be ambitious, it was once in a lifetime opportunity. Another technical thing, I think LA talked about the complexity. We joined ourselves up, we joined up the OCAD London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and the city, so that we coordinated the cultural festival, because often we learnt that you get almost two competing festivals sometimes.
And all of the work we did was free because we wanted it to be fully successful. And the final slide, just to say legacy. We struggled a lot with the rhetoric of legacy, I think, in the planning stages.
What is it? It's very hard to imagine what it would mean in practice, the legacy. We knew what we wanted it to be from a kind of policy speak perspective.
But, you know, when the energy is really on delivering this kind of juggernaut of a massive games in your city, it is hard to focus on. what comes after but of course when the olympics kind of train leaves town you know as government and particularly as the city the host city you are the custodians of that legacy and so it is something to you know really bed in um and this is our biggest um olympic legacy project it's called east bank and it's a big cultural education district in the olympic park um it's all starting to open now be the biggest cultural district that we've built in london in 150 years and it will bring thousands millions of people i think 1.5 million people to the olympic parks it will give a kind of really long-term 24 7 offer to uh what was primarily a sporting space that's it thank you so much justine and again back to you in our general conversation but meantime one more jump back in time to sydney 2000. we are thrilled to be joined today by craig He is now president and CEO of Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio, and his previous roles include leading the Royal Albert Hall and English National Ballet in London, as well as Opera Australia. But Craig is with us today because he was general manager of Image Special Events and Olympic Arts Festivals in the four years leading up to the Sydney Olympics. He also consulted with London in 2012. So, Craig, when we spoke, we discussed the journey from inheriting the use of the Olympic rings, in your case, from Atlanta as soon as the Games ended in 1996. And tell us about your four-year festival strategy and, in particular, the landmark festival of the Dreaming in 1997. Because it seems to me that's sort of one of the best cases of using the Olympics. as almost a premise to do an extraordinary piece of cultural programming.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Kate. Hello, everyone.
I'm going to be like the grumpy old man in the corner because I'm the oldest Olympiad here. So, and I have no skill in the game. So I'll be very candid about my learnings from the process. And Kate's right, we did a four year festival, four years of festivals. And the first festival I would say in hindsight, was the most successful.
It's called the Festival of the Dreaming. And it was a holy Indigenous festivals, artists from around the world. And I'd say it was a huge success because we had a great artistic director, Loda Roberts, who's an absolute genius.
And we had support from the arts in Sydney, Australia and around the world. I would say that it wasn't a success because it was part of the Culture Olympiad. In fact, most people that came would have had no clue that the Olympic Games was four years away, that it was coming. We had a slight bit of reflective glory.
But honestly, the festival was a great festival in its own right. because of the phenomenon of artists in the games four years later, but I wouldn't ascribe much of its success to the fact that it was part of the official cultural program. And I went on to do three more festivals, and my observation all the way through was that having a link to the Olympic Games was tangentially helpful, but ultimately it relied on really solid artistic presentation as the most important thing.
So it seems to me that that's one of the tensions that cities deal with in general about cultural programming all the time. As a municipal leader, you're charged with doing it in concert with larger public policy, which is, of course, the responsibility, but often what's creatively best. happens because of the driving force of artists.
It also seems to happen because of an ability to reach citizens profoundly. Can you talk to us about the creation of the live sites in Sydney? Because you said, and I think, you know, Justine would agree that that's one of the most powerful pieces of the legacy of Sydney 2000, certainly. Yeah, happy to.
I should just give a context. So, There are two tensions that ran all the way through, and my colleagues in Paris and LA will be finding these now, I'm sure, but probably not admitting it. The first tension is the Culture Olympiad, per se, the kind of official decorated cultural program, is one of the most obscure and hidden parts of the Olympic celebrations.
Small sea culture is writ large, and Justine gave some great examples of London, and London, as I said, did a brilliant job at this. And all the things that I remember about the... culture of the London Games had little or nothing to do with the official cultural program. But because Justine combined the city effort with the OCOG effort very cleverly, things happened in London that were tremendous and impactful and wonderful.
And the life sites were one of those things. So we were the first city to have the life sites back in 2000. And they weren't from the OCOG. They came from the city of Sydney.
It was the city of Sydney's idea. It was a way to have free access to the sport. on big screens and by the way we programmed artists to come and entertain you whilst you're waiting for the basketball to start and it was a huge success and very popular and they worked tremendously well but actually the live sites also highlighted the second conflict which we struggled with over the four years and i'm sure you all have since as well and that is that the the ioc uh talks very confidently and and flowerily about the importance of the cultural olympiad But it is, I'm afraid to say, slightly verging on rhetoric in that there's no financial obligation on the OCOG to deliver a cultural Olympiad.
So the OCOG then struggles to find the money. It can't go to the Olympic sponsors because their money is tied up in the Games. So instead, it goes to the creative organizations, all of whom have their own sponsors, often their competitors of the Olympic sponsors. And there's this terrible tussle.
And Justin and I faced this in London. And we faced it. I mean, you'll all face it every Olympic Games. with how do you involve your artistic colleagues who have competing sponsors to the official sponsors and deliver a cultural program that keeps the local organizations happy, doesn't offend the IOC or the OCOG and yet presents a comprehensive program.
The life sites were a great solution because they were presented by the City of Sydney and all the City of London so they didn't have the obligation to recognize Olympic sponsors in the same way and didn't really need to call on them. other sponsors because they were funded by the city. So it was a clever compromise that worked really well.
But I say compromise because the inherent tensions there commercially and contractually were a real challenge for us in Sydney and I know for London as well. And you've said, Craig, that Olympics aren't one size fits all because it depends on the government structure and the streams of funding available. But one of the other things that you have made a point about, and you referenced it, just a minute ago is the role of actual artists.
Can you speak for a minute about your point of view, having been through now several cultural Olympiads, the challenges and opportunities of involving artists every step of the way and what's the upside? Absolutely. I mean, the first thing to say is artists, the only way you'll deliver a program of any weight is to involve artists.
Of course you have to, and that's important. to give your city a personality, use artists of your, that suit your values and are from your neighbourhood, that's terribly important, but also international artists can help you with perspective to what you're presenting in your city. I would say though in using artists don't make them rarefied and don't relegate them to a program that sits off to the side, make artistic expression fundamentally part of the presentation of the games and by that I mean the ceremonies.
I mean again London was a terrific example, Dunning-Boyle I think that was one of the most creative ceremonies I've ever seen involving hundreds of artists all of whom are revered here in the UK but also in the US and around the world. We used artists in the city to design all of our bunting and pageantry, Justin spoke about this, designing the Olympic rings and architects designing the venues both temporary and permanent. You can use your architectural fraternity to create the most extraordinary buildings that... the values of your city and are useful for legacy as well.
So artists can be engaged across the board, the design of the torch, activities along the torch relay. I suppose the message is... Use artists, but integrate them into the absolute fundamental presentation of the game. Don't put them in a field or way to present their works elsewhere.
Thank you so much for that. I now want to bring Estelle back to pick up on one of the things that you just referenced, which is this issue of how do you think about artists and legacy? And Estelle, when we spoke, we talked about what success looked like for the city of Paris.
And Paris is already... globally known as one of the great cultural destinations. So unlike, for example, Sydney or Los Angeles in 84, you don't have to build a reputation.
But the kind of story you said you wanted to tell, one of the ways you would know you were successful was, you know, if two years after the Games, people were perhaps as interested in contemporary art as they are in heritage in the city of Paris. And that depends on how vividly you bring artists into the conversation around the Cultural Olympiad. Can you talk a little bit about your goals for engaging artists and how that's going? Sure.
Well, of course, Cultural Olympiad is a way, as I was saying, to promote our artists and also to give opportunity for them to show their creativity. creation and to give also some means to this creation. I think the importance for us is to have a very vision of diversity about all disciplines and all different artistic fields and to promote this diversity and this excellency in Paris. We are in a moment where the cultural sector has been very, very impacted, first by the COVID crisis and now with the inflation and the very important cost increase. So we have to pay attention to that and to make sure that all the support we give to the cultural sector.
goes to institutions but also goes to artists and this diversity of artists who are quite again fragilized in the context. Thank you so much and I want to now bring in Daniel and Kristin around this related topic because Estelle you and Daniel and Kristin have talked a lot about an approach to the cultural Olympiad that doesn't just focus on program. It's notably values driven.
What do you hope an emphasis on values will deliver for your city and its residents, both during the games and after? And let me start with Kristen on this one. Sure. I think driving with values.
I think the hope is, you know, a lot of what Justine picked up on, ensuring that residents and. and existing communities can actually feel that they can be part of the games that they can engage that they have activities that it's actually beneficial for the city because i love the way she talked about us as also custodians we're custodians of the of the legacy but we're also custodians already of our public dollars of our support for our artists and our organizations and really ultimately our communities so i think the hope is that if we drive with the values then we'll be able to have those as the outcomes. Well, of course, we also want the phenomenal artistic work. We want both locally rooted and globally known, right?
Artists, all of that. But ensuring that we're going to do that. And also just that we're going to feel that along the way, it's ultimately benefiting us and laying down investments and activities that build a sense of infrastructure, which...
can be met really broadly. That can just be more networks. That can actually be new programs.
All of those ways of working that they're beneficial and are driven and reflect our values. Daniel, anything you'd like to add? You know, I think that the values are so important and they're so important as we share them across all of our different partners as we do this.
The other values that I'd like to add, I've been thinking about this also, are the Olympic values of excellence, friendship, and respect. and how important those are in our thinking as we proceed forward. And again, using those values of thinking about how we can create sustainability, how we can create support for artists and arts organizations across our city and really help elevate and take advantage of this opportunity and this time to be able to grow the pie, to be able to help build opportunities for all.
Thank you for that. So Craig and Justine, just sort of in response to these ideas, Craig in particular, when we spoke you talked about how cities really have to believe in themselves and be front foot given that it's a very political time, particularly the immediate run up to the games, and try and anticipate the kinds of issues that may come up around a cultural program. I'm wondering if you and if Justine have anything to offer our colleagues in Paris and Los Angeles about how to navigate the sort of pushing and shoving that necessarily take place.
And for the rest of us who have joined, who may not be hosting Olympics, any lessons learned? Because every local arts agency functions differently. And the process in relation to the Olympics is often different depending on the structure with the national government.
But any thoughts about this tension between choosing a value-laden game, Lane, the idea of focusing on artists, and then how to sort of defend as you... get into the moments leading up to the games where all kinds of decisions have to get made. Sure. Yeah, thanks, Kate. And from my point of view, and I'm going to start the grumpy old man again from 23 years ago, but, you know, I think Estelle made a good point.
Estelle was mentioning how Paris is planning to give people a contemporary view of Paris and Parisian culture, which probably is different from the last time Paris... I'm sure it is, of course it is. And there'll be times when you'll be tempted to have a slightly controversial or political spin-on on your presentation, because you're representing artists'views, and often an artist has quite a political view on a topic.
And I would say, please don't suppress that. Absolutely encourage artists to be true to themselves and true to the nature of your city and the relevant political things, which... I'm sorry to say the IOC won't be happy to hear that because they will want a more sort of saccharine presentation of the game.
But this is your chance. The world will be looking at you. And so use it to represent your culture in a way that truly does represent your culture. If that means some uncomfortable presentations, then I would say that's representing who you are today in 2023. I mean, L.A.
and Paris, you're both going through challenging times in terms of what L.A. and Paris mean today. different communities and here's your chance to tell a story to the world not just about how it is now but how it's going to develop and grow in the future and if that means not doing it as so much part of the official program but being more true to the story then I would say go for it absolutely.
Justine? Yeah I would say get a good meditation practice going would be my top tip Because I think a lot of the work is kind of like channeling the UN, I would say. I think there are, as Craig was saying, there's lots of different kind of competing ideas and thoughts and pressures.
You know, if you think about artists, artists are interested in experiment, in risk, in pushing boundaries. Government and the IOC are interested in minimizing all possible risk. You know, so there you've got something that you have to kind of try and kind of, you know, kind of. you know, support through. Same goes for events and festivals and activity in the public realm.
You know, on the one hand, you've got all the authorities saying what we want is to minimize risk. We don't want lots of people in public spaces that we haven't got the full security for. On the other hand, culture is bringing people together.
You know, you don't want to create a kind of really harsh environment that's so security conscious, it kind of kills all the atmosphere. So again, there's a kind of... there's tensions to be kind of navigated. Craig spoke about the branding.
You know, you might have cultural partners who've got their own sponsors and brands, and then you've got the IOC with all its brands and sponsors. And, you know, finding a way through that, we spent a lot of time and a lot of lawyers trying to kind of find a way through so we could have everyone in our umbrella program. And then I guess the final one is, when we'd finished the Olympics in 2012, I said, the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to run a conference called death death by by procurement death by bureaucracy because one of the things we hadn't anticipated was just all the layers around procurement and process and bureaucracy um and what that does when you're trying to commission artists there's just more and more layers and and the con the context of that is very complicated um but it is fantastic I would say it's the best thing that we've ever done it drew everyone together there was such great energy And, you know, it's going to be amazing.
So speaking of amazing, it seems like the root of all of the positive things that can get done, and they are great and profound, is this ability to collaborate and to cooperate. And so I want to bring Angelita back into the conversation. When we spoke, one of the things you were talking about was your background as a festival producer. And you said you can't do anything without good partners and that you had learned more from your festival practice that you found really helpful. becoming a museum director, and I'm assuming, you know, now lead into the large platform you have now through the IOC.
Why is it that you think sometimes it's hard for leaders in the cultural field to collaborate and cooperate? And what advice would you give LA and Paris about how important that is and how to do it? Angelita, we can't hear you. I'm sorry. I think among the many things that Craig mentioned today, I think one of the things that he directly or indirectly mentioned is that in order for festivals, cultural initiatives to be successful, there has to be a sense of ownership.
And that's why having things that are community-driven where possible is very, very important. At the same time, the challenge that Justine just raised as well, it's always somewhere in the middle that we have to arrive upon. It's the whole, I mean, all of us have worked in the cultural industries for years, if not decades. And we know that it's one of the most challenging industries to be in.
And it's often trying to be relevant, to be accessible. and at the same time be able to find funders to do the work that we do. And I think putting all those things together in having the Olympic Games as a platform is, it is an opportunity, but it is an opportunity that we have to be aware of a few things.
One, it is extremely noisy during that 17 days of the Games. You have to think before the Games, after the Games. The fact that we have awarded LA so much in advance, there's so much more that can be done in building a whole new generation of people.
who are not just supporters of Olympics, but really supporters of sports, of the importance of sports in our social life. And I think all those things need to be taken into consideration. And also be very clear in terms of who your audiences are.
Are you really looking at an international audience, a local audience, and what you're trying to achieve? I think all these things have to be clearly defined. finding the right partners to go on that journey with is really the real challenge, whether is it public or private money.
Thank you so much for that. I just want to come back to Craig and Justine one more time. Justine, you've said a meditation practice, but if there is one thing that you wish you had known when you started your journey towards the Cultural Olympiad, what would it be? and you're on mute. So maybe it's take yourself off mute in every sort of figurative sense.
I think the thing in the end was to actually edit down what we wanted to achieve, because we went through quite an expansive process, lots of consultations, so many people wanting to be involved. And I think in the end... The key was to just be very, very simple and clear about what we wanted to do. And that, in the end, was the most successful thing. And that's a hard thing because you've got a massive, loads of stakeholders.
But I think one of the risks was just so much, too much, trying to kind of fix the world through the Cultural Olympiad and actually just to be focused in on what are the most compelling and powerful ideas that meet the vision and are deliverable and will advance what we want to advance and kind of honing it down to... a simple, powerful focus, which for us ended up being those kind of big commissions in public spaces. And that's what we were left with.
That's what people remember. That rhymes nicely with what Angelita was saying about, you know, build your coalition, but focus as you go. Craig?
Yeah, exactly the same. Exactly the same. I spoke to Bob Fitzgerald before I mounted our cultural program from LA.
And Bob said, Whatever you do, do something massive the night before the opening ceremony, to Justine's earlier point. You have the world's media in town, they have nothing to do, and they have a lot of cameras. So we had Andrea Bocelli and Sylvie Guillem and the Australian Ballet at the Sydney Opera House, you know, famous building, and we had press, you know, beyond their wildest dreams. And we did a lot of other stuff.
If I had just done that, that would almost be enough. A bit like, you know, Barcelona, you had the guy shooting the arrow. L.A., you had the Rocket Man. These are what people remember.
You just need iconic moments to really brand your cultural impact for your games. Everything else is ground cover. So Justine's absolutely right. I agree.
And again, Bob Fitzgerald, the legendary cultural impresario of the Los Angeles 84 games. And with that, I'm going to thank everyone. for their candid and insightful and courageous participation and turn us back over to Justine to close us out. Great.
All right. Well, look, thank you, everyone, for such fantastic insights and to Kate for moderating. What have we learned? We've learned about the holistic approach to culture, sport, and education. We've learned about how culture can shift your story as a cultural capital.
We've talked about how culture can help to accelerate your values and your mission when you have the Olympics, that culture is a team sport as well as the sport is a team sport. We've talked about it's been a moment to be ambitious from Tokyo, biggest helium balloons and super walls and big public ambitious projects, that culture can tell your story. that the live sites are an incredible opportunity to think about artists in a really holistic way around the games, to use artists as a fundamental part of the whole games project from architecture to design as well as performance. Yeah. And we've talked about the focus, you know, kind of navigating this very complex world, but remaining focused on a vision that will deliver ultimately what you want to land as a host city.
And lots more as well. But I've just tried to kind of share my highlights. We will share this on YouTube afterwards and we'll circulate the link.
And thank you all for joining us today. It's been such a rich and brilliant discussion and we're already ourselves chatting away. So thank you all for joining us and thank you to our amazing panelists and to Kate for moderating so awesomely.
Thank you so much. Thank