Arts festivals to build following for 2010 'cultural Olympiad'

Organizers of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics plan winter arts and cultural festivals over the next two years to help build excitement for the cultural festival during the Games themselves.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee (Vanoc) put out a call on Tuesday for artists and performers to participate in the "cultural Olympiad."

The first of these festivals will begin Feb. 1, 2008, and run to March 21, 2008, with another festival in 2009 and a longer festival, beginning Jan. 22, 2010, to run through the Olympics and Paralympic Games.

"The cultural Olympiad is a three-year celebration of arts and culture that actually began this year with Vanoc's contribution to a commissioning and development program," Robert Kerr, program director of the cultural Olympiad, said in an interview with CBC Radio.

"It's all there to celebrate a central pillar of the Olympic movement, which is culture."

The 2008 festival is expected to draw mainly B.C. artists, Kerr said, but he expects the 2009 festival to pull in artists from across Canada while the 2010 main event will include performers from around the world.

"I think we're looking a something between 5,000 and 7,000 artists involved," he said.

"It cuts right across the performing and the studio arts including music, theatre dance, visual arts, multimedia, new media, literary. And it's going to really focus on celebrating the contemporary Canadian imagination and include both the popular and the fine arts."

Arts groups are being encouraged to create partnership arrangements to produce new events for the festivals.

Vanoc is putting the bulk of its funding towardthe two-month 2010 cultural festival that will take place in Whistler and Vancouver during the Olympics and Paralympic Games.

The opening and closing ceremonies are being produced under a different program.

Vanoc wants to encourage exchange, collaboration

At stake is the opportunity to perform before an international audience, including 10,000 media representatives, Kerr said.

"One of the things we really want to encourage through the cultural Olympiad is artistic exchange and collaboration," he said.

"We really want to connect artists here and in Whistler with others in this region, but also across the country and around the world to build relationships, because those relationships often lead to incredible developments down the road in terms of an artist's work and recognition."

British Columbia arts groups have complained about the July 16 deadline to apply for a place in the2008 festival.

Kerr said the call could not be placed earlier because the Olympic budget was only approved in May.

"But people are really excited about the opportunity. I think that's the key thing. They know it's a little tight, but they also have been eagerly awaiting this," he said.

Vanoc will announce a process in September to apply to be part of the2009 and 2010 festivals, he said.