Shropshire’s 2012 Olympic celebrations will kick off on Friday when more than 1,000 people gather at Ironbridge. The county is taking part in a cultural celebration that will run until London 2012.

The fun will kick-start a weekend of events across Shropshire and the West Midlands, as part of the Cultural Olympiad. Andy Rchardson chats to a man with a vision.

Click . . . click . . . clicketty, click. The sound of the 2012 Olympics won’t be what you expect.

The sound of Usain’s lightning bolts and Phelps’s octuple golds will be silenced by the strains of, erm . . . knitting, poetry recital and competitive singing.

“Dr William Penny Brookes, the founding father of the modern Olympic Games, created an event that was about more than just sport,” says Paul Kaynes, the regional arts Ÿberlord responsible for a four-year programme of creative events planned for the West Midlands.

“Did you know, for instance, that Dr Brookes included knitting, poetry, creative writing and singing in his original games?

“The original Olympic idea was to create an event that celebrated culture, heritage, the natural environment, arts and so much more. We want to celebrate Dr Brookes’s original idea.”

When London was successful in its bid for the 2012 Games, it committed itself to more than just a festival of sport. It also pledged a four-year nationwide celebration of arts, culture and much, much more, called a Cultural Olympiad.

Paul will oversee the West Midlands section of the Cultural Olympiad. He is one of 12 UK creative programmers who report back to Lord Coe and his team. And the jewel in the West Midlands crown is Shropshire. Paul wants every town, village and hamlet to host its own mini Olympics.

He wants festivals, exhibitions and community celebrations to be part of the build-up. He wants the spotlight to shine on Much Wenlock, Ironbridge, Shrewsbury, Telford and every other Salopian settlement. And he wants as many people as possible to get involved.

Paul, who is based in modern offices near to Birmingham’s Symphony Hall, says: “We want to organise events in Shropshire that have national and international significance. We might build on the success of existing events and try to make them increasingly prominent, or we might do something entirely different. There are many, many options.”

Already, the West Midlands Cultural Olympiad has a series of events planned for Shropshire.

It will launch its four-year programme in the county with a spectacular three-day mini-festival from September 26 at Ironbridge. A sound-and-light extravaganza will involve lighting up the Iron Bridge, Abraham Darby houses and other key buildings with giant Olympic-themed illuminations.

More than 100 dancers from across the region will converge on Ironbridge and there will be music from Black Voices, Bombay Baja Brass Band and Orchestra of the Swan.

Paul says: “The West Midlands launch will focus on Ironbridge. But there will be around 35 events across the region.”

Shropshire will host many more activities on September 27. There will be an exhibition of Olympic posters at Ironbridge Gorge Museum, which will run to January 11; Aqualate Mere, at Newport, will host a two-hour ramble called Legends and Landscapes, and Shrewsbury’s Old Market Hall will screen an event called ‘Relay’, an audio-visual feast that celebrates great Midlands sporting triumphs spanning the period from the 1930s to the 1970s.

In Much Wenlock, people will be able to learn about the inspiration for the revival of the modern Olympic Games; at Shrewsbury’s Attingham Park, there will be a photography and visual arts exhibition called Give Me Shelter, and in the Ironbridge Gorge there will be a Victorian funfair, street market, displays and exhibitions.

Paul says: “We really want to make an impression with our launch in September. But this is just the beginning. We’re looking to put on events of global importance in Shropshire during the next four years. We’re at the early stages, there’s much more to follow.”

One of the key planks of the Cultural Olympiad will be events for the disabled. Paul’s team will work closely with Dash, the disability arts organisation for Shropshire. There will also be plenty of events in schools and colleges, with youngsters urged to come up with their own projects.

And there may be opportunities for some local artists and entertainers to play to a global audience when the 2012 Games are launched.

Paul adds: “The Cultural Olympiad presents us with incredible opportunities. We really do want to create a four-year event that will live long in the memory. There will be four years of cultural celebration, excellence and participation.

“We want projects that are developed in Shropshire to inspire other regions of the UK. We hope that people locally will become involved in major national projects.”

Lord Coe is delighted that Paul and his team are making progress. The 2012 chief, who recently visited Much Wenlock, says he wants sport to be linked closely to arts, heritage and

He says: “In our bid to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, our promise was – and still is – to make our Games accessible to everyone; to build on the vision of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Modern Olympic movement, by having a Games that inextricably links sport, culture and education. The opening weekend and the cultural programme over the next four years shows our commitment to this.”