2012 Cultural Olympiad: The Inspire Mark
June 3, 2008
On Wednesday, 28th May 2008 I went to a briefing in Leeds about the new 2012 Inspire Mark. The meeting was hosted by Arts & Business Yorkshire and presentations were made by Francesca Canty, Kian Garin de Loach, both of LOCOG, and Tessa Gordziejko, the 2012 Regional Programmer for Yorkshire.
The briefing explained that an ‘Inspire mark’ had been produced as a part of the London 2012 brand family. It was emphasised that this branding is only for non-commercial projects. The mark will endorse the fact that a project has been ‘inspired by London 2012’ and that it reflects the values of the Olympic and Paralympic Movements. This is a first time a brand mark of this nature has been approved for any Olympic or Paralympic Games.
The LOCOG team said “The inspire mark will be awarded to exceptional non-commercial projects across culture, sport, education, environment, volunteering and business regardless of scale. Successful projects will be granted the right to use the mark on various project materials, such as posters, brochures and websites and will also be included in the Cultural Olympiad’s national publicity”. It was stressed that the mark will not be approved to appear near to commercial trade-names or logos. I asked how bands that are sponsored by commercial organisations and have the name of that organisation in their title were going to get approval for their projects. The LOCOG team were unsure of how this would affect such events and said that each project would be assessed individually.
