Cultural Olympiad Who ?

"Dad, what's a Cultural Olympiad ?"

Now whilst I'm as big a fan of the Simpsons as the next man, I've never gone out of my way to play Homer to my thirteen year old daughter's Lisa. But as I struggled to replace the mental images of doughnuts with something more tangibly 'olympic' or 'cultural' it dawned on me that sugar-based pastry was about all I had to offer.

Now it's probably only fair to make a couple of things clear. Firstly, I have more than a passing association with the cultural sector, which makes my senior moment all the more inexcusable. Secondly, I'm well aware that said Olympiad has come into more than its fair share of bashing, a band-wagon that I've no wish to jump on. However, a straw-poll around the office quickly demonstrated that our collective knowledge placed all of us fairly and squarely in Springfield.

The best definition of an Olympiad we could find was this, "an Olympiad refers to a period beginning January 1 of a year in which the Summer Olympics are due to occur, and lasting four years". And if you go the 2012 website you'll find "Spread over four years, it is designed to give everyone in the UK a chance to be part of London 2012 and inspire creativity across all forms of culture, especially among young people."

All in accord there then.

Except for that word "spread".

Because to all outward appearances the Cultural Olympiad seems to have been spread fairly thinly to date, suggesting that 2012 is going to be fairly oozing (back to doughnuts again) with opportunities to participate. But appearances can be deceptive and for all I know the rest of the country is is being served a non-stop diet of cultural delights whilst I continue to grind away on the wrong side of the green door. Either way, it's time to find out.

Now I said that I have more than a passing association with the cultural sector and it so happens that one of our businesses, Muse, runs a Cultural Panel designed to capture the attitudes and opinions of culturaly engaged audiences. It's a significant enterprise, with over 30,000 attenders of galleries, museums and arts venues regularly offering their opinions on matters cultural. And in order to set the record straight we are going to use the Cultural Panel to establish what appetite there is for the Cultural Olympiad -  we'll measure the level to which our audience are aware of it, whether or not they are interested it and to what extent it appeals to them. We'll not only be able to establish what those levels are now but we'll also be able to track them in the run-up to the games themselves.

All of which I hope will, at best, evidence growing support for the Olympiad.

And at worst elevate me to mayor of Shelbyville.