Uniting sport and heritage: An evaluation of the Our Sporting Life exhibition programme

Abstract

The year 2012 provided an opportunity to celebrate sporting history during the year when London staged that most historical of international sporting events, the Olympic Games. However, the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) made no reference to sporting history within official documentation, and there was no mention of sport in the Cultural Olympiad programme. This paper aims to understand the role of the Sports Heritage Network in exploring England's sporting heritage, despite being excluded from the official planning of the London 2012 Olympic Games. This affiliation of museums and archives with an interest in England's sporting past recognised the potential of the 2012 Olympic Games and established a community exhibition programme, Our Sporting Life, which aligned with LOCOG's aims and objectives. This paper evaluates the outputs and outcomes of Our Sporting Life and aims to understand why it was not supported financially or integrated into the official Cultural Olympiad programme. The data collection for Our Sporting Life is analysed and critiqued, and the impact of the programme is considered using the Generic Learning Outcomes and the Generic Social Outcomes frameworks. Our Sporting Life delivered over a hundred exhibitions and reached over one million people, with outcomes that included increasing knowledge and understanding, and strengthening public life. It provides an off-the-shelf methodology for future major sporting events and, as such, its omission from the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad can be regarded a lost opportunity.

Keywords:

• sport
• museums
• Olympic Games
• Cultural Olympiad
• Generic Learning Outcomes
• Generic Social Outcomes

Notes

1. See Vamplew (1998, 2004, 2012), Johnes and Mason (2003), Brabazon (2006) and Phillips (2010, 2012).

2. The study of Our Sporting Life focuses only on England because its funding was derived from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and Arts Council England (ACE) whose funding remit is geographically limited to England. In Wales, there was a similar project entitled Following the Flame (http://www.wrexham.gov.uk/english/heritage/flame/), and in Scotland, there was less engagement with the London 2012 Olympic Games, perhaps due to distance from the capital city, and increased interest in the upcoming Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

3. The organisations represented on the executive committee of the SHN are the National Football Museum, Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, MCC Museum at Lord's Cricket Ground, River and Rowing Museum, World Rugby Museum, The National Horse Racing Museum, the British Golf Museum, the British Library and the National Archives.

4. For more information on London 2012 and the Cultural Olympiad, visit http://www.london2012.com/about-us/cultural-olympiad/.

5. See, for example, Stories of the World, http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do2/our-priorities-2011-15/london-2012/stories-world/.

6. In 2010, MLA was disbanded during the “Bonfire of the Quangos”, and control for museum activity was handed over to ACE.

7. The DCMS’ (2012) Taking Part Survey identified that 4.3% of people nationally identified the Olympic Games as having encouraged them to participate in a cultural activity during 2012, whereas in East London, it was 11.3% (p. 19).

8. For more information, see http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/big-society.

9. For more information, visit the Inspiring Learning for All Framework at www.inspiringlearningforall.org.uk.