Olympic Games 2012: Legacy

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I declare my interests: I was involved in LOCOG until the end of the Games and have been recently appointed to the London Legacy Development Corporation alongside the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, who I thank for tabling this debate.

I am delighted to be talking about the legacy of the Games but, for once, not about sport. Sport is still really important and I will still keep campaigning for good school sports, but much effort is expended, not least in the media, on measuring participation figures and debating appropriate levels of physical activity and what elite sport is going to look like in the 1,289 days to the Olympics and 1,322 days to the Paralympics in Rio. That is okay. Through the Games, I was introduced to a much wider constituency of people. I found that people from culture were not different; we had very similar aims of inspiring people to do something different. We must continue this communication.

I was involved in the bid from 10 years ago because I wanted to consolidate the Paralympics in the UK, and I think that we have achieved that. I was in Madrid last year with the Foreign Office, and members of the bid team there told me that they had very strong evidence to prove the economic advantage of just being a candidate city, let alone of winning the Games. There is also strong evidence for that from other cities.

When I went to Stratford for the first time in 2004, I found it almost impossible to imagine how the Games could happen. An integral part of the bid in 2005 was showing the amazing history, culture and art that is the UK. I will never forget the moment when the noble Lord, Lord Coe, stood in front of the IOC and asked the children in the audience who had come from the East End of London to stand, in order to show the world what we meant by diversity.

I asked Kate Allenby, an Olympian as well as a teacher, about the effects that she had seen from the Games. She said, “The linking of arts and culture through the tool of Boyle’s opening ceremony and the torch relay evoked a new, incredible level of interest amongst our school children. It demonstrated the power of being uniquely British—opening a gateway for children to explore and be inquisitive about who WE really are and where WE really come from”.

As I was leaving the presentation after the speeches in 2005, a member of the Paris bid team stopped me and said that we had done one thing that they had never expected from us—show emotion.

Obviously there has been a lot of talk about venues. It was right to build temporary venues; they may have cost more in the first place but will save money in the long term. Now that the Games are over, it is important to consider how Queen Elizabeth Park blends into and defines the local community, and this is what I hope the LLDC will do. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, is passionate about this, and I strongly support his work. The park cannot be an oasis that isolates or displaces the local community. In the lead-up to the Games, much time and thought was given to the employment of people from the host boroughs, diversity and procurement, involving people from every background. This work is not massively high-profile or of much interest to the media, but it needs to continue now that the Games have moved on.

As an athlete, I moved in and out of cities, often not spending much time there. My first Games were in Seoul, which bid for the Games because it was about showing vitality and that it was a modern city and was technologically up to date. The organising committee sold the Olympic village and media centre a year before the Games for $264 million but the Paralympics had a different village, as there was concern that people would not want to live where all those disabled people had been. However, they did sell the village on. Many disabled people at that time were begging on the streets, and the Games gave them the opportunity to change their lives. It was sad, however, that many of the Paralympians who we saw compete were not able to carry on their career after 1988. This cannot be said of Britain.

Barcelona was more publicly known for its regeneration, but by 1993 33% of the village was not sold. Athens was about reorganisation, and as athletes we were simply grateful that the village was built and finished, or at least nearly finished.

Sydney was about tourism, and was my first experience of bids. I was part of the Manchester bid, and it did not matter that we had years—I think around 60 years—of data to show that in spring Sydney had significantly more rain than Manchester did in summer. All they had to do was hold up a picture of the Sydney Opera House and a beach, and we lost. Actually, possibly they had to do a bit more than that.

The Beijing Games helped to change the city. In 2000 it had 392 hotels and 80,000 hotel rooms. This had risen to 800 hotels and 180,000 hotel rooms by 2008.

These days I am pleased to say that, beyond sport, the Cultural Olympiad is expected to add significantly to the prestige and prosperity of the Games. Through 2012 I was delighted to see projects, funded through Unlimited, that celebrated the work of deaf and disabled artists on an unprecedented scale.

The Women of the World event organised by Jude Kelly at the Southbank had sessions on all aspects of sport for the first time. I met artists who learnt the benefit of being physically active. Unfortunately, the one project that I was not able to be involved in was very interesting—it was using my spinal X-rays to create art.

Much of what I want to highlight could never be described as a creative industry, but it may be the start of inspiring others. After the torch relay, many people have approached me and said that this inspired them to join local groups, to contribute back to the community and to look at culture in a different way. There are several groups of Games makers and London ambassadors but one, the Spirit of London 2012, helps local groups find volunteers for other projects. This is community spirit at its best and what the big society should really be.

In the past 18 months I have visited many schools, either in person or through the power of modern technology on my computer. They embrace not only sport but art. I have been sent pictures, collages, models and boiled eggs dressed as athletes, Games makers and performers; I have been sent essays using the Games as an inspiration. That was not just before the Games, this is happening now. Who knows who will go forward from these people to form an integral part of future creative industries?

I was also reminded by Kate Allenby of the quilting project, where thousands of local organisations joined together to send each and every athlete who came to London 2012 a memento of their time in London. I had a beautiful cushion sent to me by residents of a care home. Who can forget the guerrilla knitters of Saltburn depicting every Olympic and Paralympic sport on the pier? The Games makers were stunning in themselves, but if you looked carefully you could see “knitteds”. Many knitted Games makers were proudly being carried, and I have one on my desk. It was started by Liz Gibson, who made the first one and then made the pattern freely available to anyone who wanted it. I met one young man working at Heathrow Airport as a Games maker who knitted his own, complete with full accreditation. For those who could not knit their own, others helped out. I met many young people who, because they had seen the knitteds, suddenly decided that they wanted to learn to knit so that they could make one of their own. These are not the big projects we associate with the cultural Olympiad, but they are really important.

On a personal note, the Paralympic Games gave me the opportunity to fly through the air on a high wire. “Terrified” is the only word I can use. I have been asked more questions about that than about sport. For me it will never happen again, but it will give inspiration to young people who think it can.

The Games were a magical moment to be celebrated and were so much more than sport. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, that this is the start, not the end.