Announcing the Ahead of the Game Festival, July to Sept 2012!

West Sussex-Ahead of the Game is delighted to announce that we have secured additional Arts Council funding totalling £190,000 to support the opening and closing events for the Ahead of the Game Festival, and Blue Touch Paper Carnival.

The Ahead of the Game Festival will take place between July and September 2012, celebrating the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games through an extraordinary programme of commissioned outdoor performance. The festival marks the culmination of the four-year Ahead of the Game Cultural Programme, coordinated by West Sussex Arts Partnership, and is one of the most ambitious cultural celebrations inspired by London 2012 in the South East.

The festival will feature five main strands, taking place across the county:

Whispering Woods

Five hundred people singing in a woodland at night for a promenade audience

Blue Touch Paper Carnival

Pioneering disability-led carnival creating costumes and floats with international carnival artists

The Child and the Magic

Fifty-minute children's opera presented in a circus tent set within a magical, animated garden

The Seed

Theatre performances across the Great Gardens of Sussex and a worldwide online quest to solve a hundred year mystery

Dromos

Travelling, pop-up, multi-artform festival created by young people for villages and urban neighbourhoods in West Sussex

Each project strand has been awarded the London 2012 Inspire Mark, and as such they are officially recognised as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad: the largest cultural celebration in the history of the modern Olympic and Paralympic Movements.

We'll be announcing more details about the festival soon.

For more information visit http://www.westsussex-aheadofthegame.com/