Olympic Park 2012

Not far from the Olympic Park, just south of the River Thames in Greenwich Park, you can visit the actual Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory where, since 1675, each new year officially starts on the stroke of midnight GMT. It is also a scientific treasure as it marks ‘longitude zero’ from which distances to everywhere in the world are measured and the official east & west hemispheres are marked.

The Observatory contains a Planetarium and Astronomy Centre and is part of the National Maritime Museum. There is a charge of 7 GBP for adults to go into the courtyard with the Line, but much of the other parts of the complex are free like most of London’s museums etc. There is a tube stop “Greenwich’ within easy walking distance and the museum is normally open every day 10am -5pm. It’s a good day out with the park surrounding the museum and also you can generally explore that side of the river by foot from there.

Since the last post, I’ve been thinking how sometime just going for a wander is the best way to enjoy a city. Like any major city London has its dodgy corners, but on the whole it is a safe place. I’d encourage everyone coming to the Olympics to get out there and explore East London for themselves.

If you want to plan a little in advance, you could browse this fantastic website – East London’s Free Art & History Show – by the late Lawrence Rigal (formerly Rabbi of the Stepney Settlement in East London, social historian, youth club leader, author on Liberal Judaism, photographer and wine maker). It has maps for each district with descriptions of the interesting historical points and it is really easy to navigate back and for between the area map and the descriptions. Bow, Stratford, Popular, Limehouse and all the other sites around the Olympic Park are all included.

Street Market Walks: Walking tours of local markets, some of which might not be around much longer if new developments happen. Designed by Sandra Shevey a former biographer (John Lennon etc.) turns her hand to giving a flavour of local oral history & neighbourhood identity.

Murder Mystery: A spooky evening walk build around the east end serial killer of the late 1800s. Tours are guided by a crime historian Donald Rumbelow and part of ‘London Walks’ one of the larger walking tours company.

Radical History: Tours by a local east-end historian David Rosenberg with an anti-fascist focus. He brings out the melting pot and social revolutionary history of this side of London.

I’ll keep my eyes out for more…

An art award from CREATE, the cultural partnership of the six east London boroughs which surround the Olympic Park, is now open for submissions. Any resident of Barking and Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets or Waltham Forest can enter to win a commission of 50,000 GBP. Details here : http://createlondon.org/art-award-call-for-submissions/

With the introduction of ‘Localism’ there may be further changes to the governance of this Olympic Park site. After games time it could be that a ‘Mayoral Development Corporation’ would become responsible for the rates and development permissions in the area. The UK’s professional planning institution the RTPI was focusing on the park recently with an event in Stratford and one of the presentations suggested this may well happen. Dawn Hawthorn from the GLA talked about the next steps and the changes in terms of planning processes if this was to happen.

I have borrowed this image from the RTPI’s own London Calling blog.  Quite an interesting site in itself, to keep an eye on for changes and challenges about development and related social issues in London.

From 9th-26th Sept tickets for the 2012 Paralympics will be on sale from the official ticketing website for the London 2012 games. Most cost under 50 GBP and give a full days worth of access, great value but likely to be oversubscribed. According to the BBC they are limited to UK & EU residents and oversubscribed tickts will be balloted the same way that the Olympic event ticket were.

This story from Inhabitat i-zin describes an urban initiative for “2,012 Public Growing Spaces For London by Next Year With Capital Growth Scheme”.

http://m.inhabitat.com/capital-growth-scheme-creates-2012-public-gardens-by-2012-for-london/

London’s image has been tainted this week by evenings of rioting and looting in parts of the city. There were other copy cat outbreaks in Manchester, and other cities but focusing on London, these areas did not all have affluent businesses or large name high street stores. Naturally, the analysis of the demonstrations turned to the eighties when parts of the country, such as Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham and London were hit for 6 weeks by unrest, but the roots of those movements are well understood whereas the disturbances here seem less clearly motivated and more opportunistic than idealistic. In any case the whole event, which has cooled off, seemed to be self-harming rather than a cry for change since right now what we need is to build new opportunities and the right environment for a succesful future. Most Brits are of course trying to do that. I’d say that anyone coming to London or any other UK venue for the Olympics should not be put off by what the have seen, and I’m going to try to create some new catergories in the run up to the games to give some advice and ideas about where to go, how to get there etc. and what to see.

Here is the chance to enter an Olympics prize draw, to spend the day with the ‘Team GB’ athletes representing UK: PRIZE DRAW. The prize includes your travel (within UK) and two nights in a five star hotel for up to five people. Visa are the ‘presenting’ sponsors of the UK’s Olympic & Paralympic teams, and they are also offering a £150 Visa pre-paid card for each person.

The promo video of Team GB inviting you to spar with them is brilliant! I think it’s a chance to see them close up training but they’re also saying you can train with them too, so it could be an active day out. I reckon it could be amazing for a group of friends who do sports together, although the advert does say it does not matter who you pick to come along with you.

Copyright Hugh O’Malley

This red scaffolding to the left of centre is in fact the base of the metal Tower, which will ‘adorn’ the Olympic park in London’s east end. It is to be called the Obital and will function as a viewing platform. Next to it is a lower and more sweeping structure, this building is the aquatics centre (designed by Zaha Hadid).