WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE will take centre stage for the Cultural Olympiad, a £40 million event which aims to broaden the appeal of the 2012 London Olympics beyond sport.


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Run by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the World Shakespeare Festival will take up the theme of the London games being a multi-cultural event by staging international collaborations, with new takes on some of the planet’s most famous plays. It is set to kick off on 23 April, Shakespeare’s birthday.

The Cultural Olympiad would be “an unprecedented opportunity to confirm London as the world’s cultural capital,” said Nicholas Hytner at the Festival’s unveiling yesterday.

As well as the Bard, the Festival is to feature 12 new public art projects, Film Nation, which will encourage young people to make movies by such stunts as a mobile phone film competition and the Festival of Carnivals, which is, wouldn’t you know it, a festival of street carnivals.

The long-haul to the Cultural Olympiad starts at the end of this month when an Open Weekend takes place all over the country to introduce the themes of the event and get people involved.

More info from the official site here.