This is Emily, here to help and give you a bit of guidance on your applications…I’m getting lots of calls and emails from people asking about what information they should include in their applications. It’s great to know there’s so much interest out there and if you do have any questions please post them here so anyone can read the response and understand more about the project, or email me at: [email protected] , but we aren’t offering any pre-application support, because we aren’t assessing the applications. It’s the artists and producers on the panel and we couldn’t predict what they will look for even if we wanted to. However we are being absolutely open about the guidance we are giving the panels – which was strongly influenced by their feedback when we first met them to discuss the project. We are simply looking for the most brilliant ideas, that best suit the region, and fit with the project’s deliberately broad aims. So those 400 words really are to focus on communicating the artistic strength of your idea to them. What is so visionary, exciting, inspiring and challenging about your idea and does it show potential to meet the project aims? There are no hidden agendas or a long list of tick boxes that the applications need to meet. We are looking for brilliant ideas that will celebrate the spirit and ambition of the London 2012 Games. So by all means briefly outline any commitments, plans, collaborations etc you have to demonstrate how you’ve thought through the idea or to help bring it to life, but there really is no need to go into logistical detail. Remember these are artists and producers on the panel, what’s likely to grab their attention is cracking ideas that are so good they jump off the page and scream out to be made. Not budgets, business plans or technical information – we’ll look at all that fun stuff in the development stage for the shortlisted projects. So we can’t guess what the panel members may chose, and one thing that was clear from meeting them is that each panel has it’s own character and dynamic and may be excited by very different things depending on what is important to them and their region. The one thing that really struck me when we met, and it happened in each panel, was the wonderful moment at the end of the day when all the panel members looked around at one another (some slightly surprised!) and all said that it was beginning to dawn on them just how open the project was, how this really could be anything, and how excited they were that they would be taken completely by surprise and blown away. So go on, get those applications in!
