Full Circle Arts received the following email and thought we’d share it with our readers:

With 6 months to go until the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympics I am pleased to attach a press release that was sent out today confirming 4 locations in the Northwest who will be hosting official Paralympic Flame Celebrations as part of the Paralympic Torch Relay.

These events will take place in Ellesmere Port, Knowsley, Manchester and Preston across the August Bank Holiday weekend. It is another good news story for the region and great to see the interest in being part of the Paralympic Torch Relay from partners across the Northwest. Further details of these events will be released in due course.

In addition to the official Flame Celebration events for other partners wishing to get involved in the Paralympic Torch Relay LOCOG have created a concept called ‘Light a Lantern’.

Light a Lantern overview
To further spread the Paralympic Flame LOCOG will be encouraging individuals, communities and organisations to ‘put their flame on the map’ by hosting a lantern themed event. At the core of these events is the idea of creating visual displays using light/lanterns to be captured in photos and added to an interactive map showing all the flame activity over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Light a Lantern will be promoted both through the Paralympic Torch Relay and Local Leaders.

London 2012 will be encouraging the UK to hold Lantern events on the day their national flame is lit (England Friday 24th Aug) with a lighting moment at around 8.30pm (dusk) across the country.

On the August Bank Holiday Weekend the Paralympic Games (starts Wednesday 29th) will be less than a week away and we will be linking Light a Lantern to the idea of supporting local athletes about to compete through lanterns decorated with good luck messages ranging to larger visuals formed through multiple lanterns put together.

What will a Light a Lantern event look like?
Examples of what a Local Authority Light a Lantern event might look like:
• Holding lantern making workshops and creating a shared place where people can display the lanterns made during the day to be lit together later that evening (example images included below) – e.g. at a Live Site, Town Hall
• Holding a lantern procession culminating in a community space with inspire projects showcasing Paralympic sports
• Creating an aerial shot in an open space, such as a park, formed through multiple lanterns e.g. local Volunteer Community groups such as the scouts and individuals/families form the Agitos (Paralympic equivalent of the Olympic rings) or a Good Luck Para GB message

What support will Light a Lantern events have from LOCOG?
Publicity and look for Light a Lantern events:
• Similar to Flame Celebrations a press release template will be made available to help publicise events
• A branded template will be made available for posters and save the date fliers
• Publicity through the London 2012 events database
• Marked on an interactive map of the UK showing Flame Festival and Flame celebrations taking place across the UK
• Regionalised emails to the Local Leader database publicising events to take part in in their area
• Light a Lantern publicised through Journey emails to the London 2012 database of 4 million people

In order to give inspiration and help people celebrate the Paralympic Torch Relay London 2012 will provide a toolkit on the Local Leader website. The Local Leader – Light a Lantern website content is being developed timed for a Local Leaders marketing campaign in early April.

Further details will be shared in due course.

If you have any questions on any of this please let me know.

Many thanks,

Rob

Rob Young
Northwest Coordinator for the 2012 Games
Mobile: +44 (0) 7919 328389

Web: www.nwbeinspired.com
Twitter: @robyoung78 @NWfor2012

Check out our new website coming soon – www.nwfor2012.com

(featured image by by epSos.de)