LOCOG Creative Director Unveils Paralympic Ceremony Details

(ATR) LOCOG will share resources for the ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, an organizing committee first that will create a Paralympic ceremony "never seen before."

Ceremonies creative director and Oscar nominee Stephen Daldry made the comments at a press conference alongside LOCOG chair Sebastian Coe on Wednesday.

Thepair alsorevealed select details about the Games’ opening ceremony.

Daldry confirmed that there will be some circus skills on show on August 29, but says both the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies share financial backing as well as artistic themes.

"The Paralympics and Olympics are all under one umbrella," he said.

"We’re trying to make these ceremonies something the Paralympics has never seen before and we believe that is going to be achieved.

"For the first time we are all under one roof, so all those resources can be shared. Each show stands alone but thematically there is a relationship between all four. Therefore a proportion of money is shared out between all shows."

"In terms of other games we are much more modest about what we are spending than what has been spent in a generation. We don’t want to be extravagant but we want to create a Games that is imaginative and like [opening ceremony director] Danny Boyle said; a peoples’Games."

The title of the ceremony is ‘Enlightenment’ and will showcase deaf and disabled artists and performers. A cast of more than 3000 volunteers also will be included in the ceremony alongside 68 professional performers, according to Paralympics Artistic Director Jenny Sealey.

Fifty specialist performers are also taking part in an eight-week circus skills training program at Circus Space in Hackney. Coe said at times he felt that he and his colleagues were performing circus feats in preparing the Games to come to London.

"I’m delighted to be here creating 50 performance spaces in this extra center," he said. "I rather feel and most of my organization feels that’s what we’ve been doing – lots of moving parts, plates up in the air - not too many dropping, and eating and playing with fire."

Coe also confirmed that pupils from schools in the host boroughs will be part of the event as part of the under 16s volunteer cast.

The ceremony will mark the occasion when the Paralympic Games, which originated in the UK as the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1948, come home.

Reported by Christian Radnedge.

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