The Guardian covers more Olympic ceremony Skulduggery.

Locog denied Sendall’s claim, saying Boyle’s vision for the opening ceremony “was inspired by the very well-known Glastonbury Tor landmark and British history. The vision was Danny Boyle’s and his only”.

I was surprised when a friend posted a link to my facebook today.

“How Olympic cauldron fanned flames of fury at American design studio”

It seems that Locog, Danny Boyle, Heatherwick et al, were stealing ideas with impunity. I still find it difficult to believe that a cultural figure of Danny Boyles’ standing would simply copy an idea by a less well known (and less successful) artist. But the statement made on his behalf by LOCOG that the mound “….was inspired by the very well-known Glastonbury Tor landmark and British history. The vision was Danny Boyle’s and his only”, seems to lay the blame clearly at his door.

As far as I’m concerned this is an admission that Danny Boyle used the concept that this blog documents as his ‘inspiration’.

It would have been so much easier if they just asked and offered some kind of attribution, then everyone would win, and maybe I would have made the Birthday Honours list (Ha ha!)

To me it is looking increasingly like LOCOG/ACE gave a much stronger brief than has been admitted to the design team, perhaps this brief contained images and text cut and pasted from other LOCOG related initiatives. Could it have been a lazy LOCOG / ACE co-ordinator that has instigated this debacle? Perhaps time will tell. Where are the LOCOG whistleblowers when we need them?

I am intrigued to see what happens next!

If you have just picked up on this story please take the time to read some of my previous posts to put this latest news in a larger context.

Olympic Opening Ceremony Debacle goes mainstream media!

Sunday Telegraph 18th November 2012

In the last few days this story has appeared in some mainstream media publications both in print and online. It seems that the snowball launched in August has gathered momentum and has become quite a big story.

A couple of weeks ago a journalist from a press agency (BNPS) based in Bournemouth called me after reading about my concerns in a few arts specific news outlets, Arts Professional and Yorkshire Times.

He interviewed me on the telephone and told me if the story was picked up on he’d let me know. He didn’t though and the Daily Mail ran with the story on Thursday.

Meanwhile a Journalist from the Sunday Telegraph called me and conducted another telephone interview and sent a photographer to my house on Friday.

The BBC called and Peter Levy interviewed me but seemed to get frustrated by his lack of understanding of the situation. He decided not to continue the interview or air it.

The Hull Daily Mail also called and conducted  a brief telephone interview. They subsequently ran the story on Friday complete with the wrong images and out of date irrelevant ones instead.

Today I have noticed that other media outlets are running the story The Sun and Yahoo News and various legal blogs etc….

Its unfortunate that the media running the story seem to be predominantly the right wing ones. Is this because Danny Boyle has leftist leanings or something? Or perhaps because the Olympic Games was largely a Labour Party production?

The most accurate news story from the mainstream media has been the Sunday Telegraph one so far. The most common inaccuracy is the claim that I am suing Danny Boyle. This is not true. I have sought legal advice on the matter and so far have received one legal opinion about where I stand in relation to the law with my claim. Public comments seem to concentrate on the mound itself and rightly point out that I didn’t invent it. I was in fact predominantly inspired by Silbury Hill, I am well aware of many spiral mounds round the world both ancient and modern. The devil, as they say, is in the detail and it is the details that make this a case of ‘copying’, in my opinion. I make no claim to have invented hills or grass or spirals, that would be silly.

Danny Boyle has also been in the news championing regional theatre with colourful language. I have nothing against Danny Boyle. I agree with him about regional funding etc. I enjoyed watching Slumdog Millionaire! However if it is true that the opening ceremonies introduction and set were entirely his vision then I can only conclude that he personally must have seen my work.

It is only a few weeks since I received an email telling me that Danny was entirely responsible for the visual concept of the opening ceremony, before that I didn’t even know who was responsible for it. I imagined that such large projects would include teams of artists and designers all presenting ideas to him and perhaps he would make suggestions and choose his favourites (whilst stroking a white cat and throwing chunks of fish to his pet sharks?).

Despite seemingly being used as a stick to undermine Danny Boyles social concerns (an unforseen and regrettable coincidence) I am pleased that I have managed to kick up an almighty fuss. The only weapon available to those with no money, power or influence.

I hope that goes some way toward explaining how I feel about this story.

The other aspect to the story which is so far missing from all of the above mainstream outlets relates to the competition I entered to begin with, in 2009. The Artists Taking the Lead competition has been placed under some scrutiny by Carol Lee and she seems to have uncovered evidence that the competition itself was corrupted by vested interest and large ccorporate cultural institutions. Now the Arts Council England Yorkshire regional office is conducting an investigation into itself. This is best read about online at the Arts Professional website it has several articles which discuss this issue in detail.

As you can imagine, not only was the competition possibly a foregone conclusion, but also to see mine and Dominics artwork and concept form part of the opening ceremony three years later, left me no option but to stand up for our work.

I didn’t do it lightly. I had to consider the likelihood that I will be laughed at, scorned and probably never get funded for an art project again! But weighing up these potential consequences with my own conscience left me no choice but to act as I have…… to be continued….

UPDATE:

Close Up of Sunday Telegraph images

Mound Update (related Articles)

 

Olympian Struggle for Fair Play

Artist sus­pects foul play over Olympic Open­ing Cere­mony.

Here is a response from Cluny Mcphereson (ACE york­shire) to the AP art­icle http://artsprofessional.co.uk/Magazine/view.cfm?id=6473&issue=257

Here is AP’s response to the response: http://artsprofessional.co.uk/Magazine/view.cfm?id=6473&issue=257

More from AP on the ATTL com­pet­i­tion: http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/Magazine/view.cfm?id=6489&issue=257

And this art­icle: Arts Coun­cil Under Pres­sure in York­shire: http://yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Arts-Council-Under-Pressure-In-Yorkshire

Also see this related art­icle by Roger Tom­lin­son on Brand in your hand http://brandinyourhand.ning.com/profiles/blogs/public-scrutiny-and-transparency-matters

Cen­ter for Art Law art­icle on the mound pro­posal http://www.itsartlaw.com/2012/09/lawsuit-by-competition-finalist-over.html

Olympic Opening Ceremony

After the Opening ceremony of the Olympics 2012, I began receiving lots of messages from friends asking if I had contributed to the opening festivities. It seems the central element was a spiral mound surrounded by a pastoral landscape. A cursory look at some stills from the event seemed to show some remarkable similarities, not only conceptually but down to some of the smaller visual details, to my good friend and collaborator Dominic Heffer’s illustrations. For example, see above.

The top image is one of our postcards that showed the mound through the ages.

The image below is a mock up of the opening ceremony.

The little house being in almost the same place seems a little more than coincidental.

As struggling artists in the North of England some recognition of our hard work to bring this concept to light would have been most welcome, if indeed it did inspire the opening ceremony.

Although my proposal was to build an actual mound 40m high in the flat landscape of Holderness, East Yorkshire, it does seem that our imagery and conceptual vision has heavily influenced the theatrical opening ceremonies theme and look.

My proposal to build a neo-neolithic mound was not merely thought of for the Olympic competition, it is an idea that I have wanted to fulfill for many years. The Olympic competition was a potential vehicle to make it happen.

Again, if it inspired the producers of the opening ceremony, some recognition of my bid to create one for real could have made a huge difference in its viability.

It seems there is more to this story concerning the regional judging process of the ‘Artists taking the lead’ competition, which if true makes this situation even more troubling and disturbing to me, however I leave that to September’s issue of Arts Professional to explain.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Also see my latest blog in this matter here : Olympic Opening Ceremony Debacle goes Mainstream Media