‘Battle for the Winds’ – Launching the London 2012 Sailing events

Client: London2012, funded by Arts Council England

Audience: 11,000 live for the finale event on Weymouth beach

Narrative: Gathering the winds to power the Sailing and Windsurfing events

The brief:

Initiated by Cirque Bijou working in partnership with Desperate Men, we created an epic narrative bringing together creative partners across the South West with 52 regional events and 3 final days in Weymouth, with an overarching narrative of bringing the winds to launch the Olympic and Paralympic sailing and windsurfing events.

Challenges:

This project was a mammoth set of wonderful, inspiring and formative challenges. We were working outdoors, co-ordinating 8 regional groups of partners, creating a large scale spectacle on the sand and on the water at the Olympic live site. We brought together 150 disabled and non-disabled artists, professional and non-professional, and large bespoke structures, fire, live music, Royal Marines, boats, a parade, video projections and 2000 community participants on the night, who waded into the sea with flaming torches.

The months long project culminated with an epic finale event which had an impact on a huge number of its participants for their future ambitions, including Cirque Bijou. Our ambition to create audacious large scale, collaborative projects rocketed after 2012.