The RELAYS project may not have won the gold for the Coubertin Olympic Vision Award – but coming 3rd out of 231 projects seems like an achievement worth shouting about! The project was awarded another bronze for the Outstanding Sporting Project. All these awards are the result of some brilliant teamwork by the whole RELAYS team across the south west.  See more about the awards Podium here.

We’ve been working hard to put together a good mix of screenings, talks and events for our RELAYS programme in July – with a ‘sport meets culture’ theme there’ll be something for everyone! Here’s a small sample of what’s to come – full details of the programme with times and information on how to book will be available later in May – please come back then!

The programme:

It’s 64 years since London last held the Olympic Games, played out as the rubble of WWII and food rationing were largely still in place. Author David Golblatt (How To Watch The Olympics, The Ball is Round – A Global History of Football) will be in conversation with Olympic Cycling legend Tommy Godwin to reflect on his memories of the 1948 ‘Austerity Games’ – a Cyclescreen event. Tommy Godwin recently re-visited the site of his 1948 success in Herne Hill, London, and the event was recorded as an audio slideshow by The Guardian as part of their London Lives series – you can see the slide show here.

For grown ups that simply refuse to stop playing, there’ll be a chance to showcase ping pong moves in the café/bar after a little cinematic inspiration; a warm-up event for Ping! Bristol.

Meanwhile, kids get to watch and play at a special Cinekids event inspired by Asterix’s adventures at the Olympic Games. Counter Punch, a local short made by young people from Knowle West Media Centre as part of the RELAYS programme, screens alongside Nicaragua’s La Yuma, the story of a headstrong young woman (Alma Blanco) who dreams of escaping poverty by becoming a boxer. Many of the world’s greatest runners hail from Bekoji, a remote town in the southern Highlands of Ethiopia. In Town of Runners, a new documentary by award-winning director Jerry Rothwell (Donor Unknown), young girls from Bekoji – an Ethiopian highland town which has produced some of the world’s greatest distance athletes – try to run their way to a different life.

Don’t forget to come back in a few weeks to find out more!

This nomination follows the RELAYS project being shortlisted for the “Award for Invaluable Volunteering Project” and being awarded a Bronze Medal for the “Award for Outstanding Sporting Project” at the Podium Awards, and as a reminder of why this high profile has been achieved, here are some statistics showing the amazing reach of this SW project

1,327 events have been held
79,522 young people have been involved
371,187 members of the public have attended
1,825 businesses have been supported
6,570 volunteering opportunities have been provided

Other activities we’re working on are the Encounters 0117 Film Challenge in May (make a film in 117 hours, in Bristol – while the Olympic Torch is in town! This year open to under 18s); the Olympic themed Media Literacy Workshops for schools in June, and helping organise media camps in Weymouth where young people can learn how to report on both the Olympic and Paralympic sailing and Cultural Olympiad events using the tools of citizen journalism – more on this soon.

In the meantime, to help pass the 100 days Metro newspaper have produced 100 facts about the Olympics that you may find diverting! The first 25 are here, the remainder will be added over the next few days.

Take a visit to the Jurassic Coast between May and August this year and if you’re brave enough, you may want to see a film in a unique venue – the Travelling Pliosaur Cinema! Yes, you will be able to enter the dragon – well a giant sea-lizard called Horace -  to experience “a unique blend of engineering, film and puppetry devised by artist Sarah Butterworth, with theatrical engineer Mike Pattison, and film by Forkbeard Fantasy”.

Horace is one of several creative projects that are evolving as part of The Jurassic Coast Earth Festival 2012, which is also a RELAYS project.

For more details of the great programme visit their website.

To celebrate the arrival of the Olympic Torch this May in Bristol, filmmakers are invited to create quality short films in just 117 hours based in and focused on Sports, Games and Play in the city.

This high-energy event will encourage visual storytelling and will promote Bristol as a filming and sporting location, presented by Bristol City Council, Bristol Film Office, Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival and M Shed, inspired by London 2012 as part of the Cultural Olympiad in partnership with Relays, Legacy Trust and Watershed.

From 19 May, we will challenge filmmakers to make a short film up to three minutes long (either drama, documentary, experimental, live action or animation) in 117 hours. Films must be of cinematic quality and be suitable for pre-watershed viewing. Each film must contain some elements of the three themes that are the core of the M Shed museum but with the overall theme of Sport, Games and Play.

Bristol Film Office are securing locations in the city with all location fees waived for participants of the challenge. (These will be finalised in April and available for pre-booking on the 14th May.)

The challenge has been granted the London 2012 Inspire mark which recognises outstanding projects and events helping deliver the Games’ lasting legacy. Part of the London 2012 brand family, it is the badge of the wider Inspire programme which has sport at its heart and London at its centre, but it is more than London and more than sport. It is for London and the UK, for sport and culture, for education, volunteering and business opportunities.

The finished films will form part of the city’s memory, and will join the M Shed museum collections, so that they will be available to view by visitors in the future.  They will be screened as part of a celebratory event at the museum on Friday 25 May.

One film will be selected by a distinguished jury and awarded a prize of £1,000 cash. To find out more and to take part visit the Encounters 0117 Film Challenge site

Media camps for young people, aged 16-24 are taking place in Weymouth & Portland – host borough for the London 2012 Sailing Events – between July and September this summer as part of Maritime Mix – London 2012 Cultural Olympiad by the Sea

#media2012 is a UK-wide collaboration aiming to foster relations between citizen and professional journalists, and encourage unaccredited reporters to explore the stories behind and around the Olympic and Paralympic Games. It also strives to make links with subsequent Olympic host cities (most immediately Sochi, Winter Games 2014, and Rio de Janeiro, Summer Games 2016) to ensure the regular participation of citizen journalists at the Olympic & Paralympic Games.

Continuing from work begun at the W2 Media Centre during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games (dubbed the first “twitter Olympics”), #media2012 will see a variety of citizen journalist projects rolled out across the UK in the summer of 2012, supported by the London 2012 Creative Programmers in Scotland and the North West and South West of England.

As part of this activity, the #media2012 South West of England hub (a partnership between Watershed, Bristol; Weymouth College; the University of Bath; b-side and the London 2012 Creative programmer for the SW) is running a series of four “#media2012 summer camps” for young people/students, aged 16-24, in Weymouth and Portland in collaboration with Weymouth College.

For more information please contact liz.milner@watershed.co.uk

Our RELAYS colleagues at Bristol University have once again arranged a fantastic opportunty for 1300 or so Bristol Secondary school pupils to sample a whole range of sports at their Combe Dingle Sports Complex. The first day, yesterday Monday 26th, had 300 children from central Brisatol schools trying out Lacrosse, Golf, Basketball, BMX, Street Dance, Ultimate Frisbee, Fencing  and Handball amongst many others. You can read more about it, and watch some films of the activities and listen to interviews with participants, teachers and volunteers here.

You can also see photographs from the Festival in the gallery

After our visit to the London Games site 18 months ago, it’s interesting to read this article from The Guardian about what’s been added – some strange, handsome and utilitarian structures!

There’ll be some more citizen journalism training sessions starting soon with students from various locations, building up to our visits to some of the media camps we’re helping to organise in Weymouth during the Games – more details soon!