Life after 2012

It’s a year since I experienced one of the greatest days of my life and performed at the London 2012 Ceremonies.

I vividly remember every detail, from the months and months of dance preparation to the first moment my fellow volunteers and myself walked into the stadium surrounded by a thousands of excited spectators!

(My wonderful ceremonies costume lol)

The weeks of training culminated in just 15 minutes of performance time!

And boy what a performance – if I don’t say so myself 🙂

I never could have imagined that little old me would be dancing away in front of her Royal Highness, 007 and almost 2 billion TV viewers!

And after the performance there was the after-party! The least said about that the better, but from all accounts it was brilliant!! 🙂

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FFkqZhXkID0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFFkqZhXkID0

As for my working relationship with the London 2012 Games, I’d been living with them since the capital won the bid back in 2005. Working for BBC London, I facilitated the production of community stories for TV and radio, presented a series where I competed alongside olympic and paralympic athletes, managed online radio stations, gave a speech on the Olympic Spirit for TedXYouth and also managed a directing credit alongside legend, Jon Plowman on BBC’s comedy series, Twenty Twelve – so all in all a pretty amazing seven years!

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(That’s me preparing for my TedXYouth speech)

So 12 months on and and what now? Well for me I bid farewell to the BBC at the end of last year after 10 years of what I consider a good career! After some much needed time away, I’m finally ready to move forward and carve out a new career (hopefully in the media) Any offers of work will now be looked on seriously 😉

As for east London, it’s been difficult to see where exactly the Games have really made a significant impact. Yes there’s a stadium and new Queen Elisabeth park, but neither is open to the public yet. (Just over six hours to go when writing this) Westfield’s Stratford city shopping centre seems to be the only clear winner at the moment.

Yes we’ve had the odd festival in the park, but they really could have been anywhere…

Housing is one of the legacy (not sure I still like that word) plans that I think everyone is eagerly anticipating, but from the little news that’s been released into the public domain it would appear that any benefits for working Londoners is some way off!

http://m.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jul/21/london-2012-olympics-architecture-legacy

As for athletics, it was a great Games – both the Olympics and Paralympics truly inspired generations, but with news stories of funding cuts every other month, it’s hard to believe Team GB or Paralympics GB will have a similar medal haul in any future Games without a reconsideration of how grass root and elite sport is funded. But we wait and see.

I’m just touching on a few of the issues that are lingering about at the moment. No doubt that these will all be forgotten as we relive the glory this weekend with the British Athletics Sainsbury’s Anniversary Games. I guess the real future can wait for two more days as we enjoy the likes of Usain Bolt and Jessica Ennis-Hill on our screens again!

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(Carrying the Ukrainian flag at the Paralympics closing ceremony)