Volunteering at the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony – Experiences and Reminiscences
About this record
June 2022 marks the tenth anniversary of the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. We are thrilled to reconnect with the stories we uncovered for Newham Heritage Month.
Stories of the volunteers in the opening ceremony
Hundreds of volunteers gave their time and effort to make the 2012 Olympic Games a success.
Valentina Wong, a member of True Heart Theatre, was one of the volunteers at the opening ceremony. Through her introductions we received a fantastic response from Olympic volunteer performers who wished to be part of our project. We selected a group of five volunteers representing different roles in the ceremony and a diversity of ages and gender to take part in our interviews.
For the interviews, we experimented with a different way of recording oral history by adding a Playback Theatre element to it:
– The individual would tell us about their experience of volunteering at the Olympic Games
– We would hear the story and at some point, we would pause the sharing and invite the performers to recreate scenes with poetry, movement and sounds that resonate with that part of the story.
– We have found that this method not only allows us to capture facts of the events, our creative input would also enable the interviewee to reflect further on how they feel about the experience
Watch the Playback Theatre interviews highlights here.
Valentina Wong volunteered at both the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games – Beijing then London. She was a performer at the Opening Ceremony and a Games Maker at the main stadium. She was also part of the producing team for the cultural programme 2008-2012 inspired by the Games at Westminster City Council. Her first association with the Olympic Games started even earlier, dating back to 2004 when she was a radio host in Hong Kong announcing the Athens 2004 daily medal table. She then applied to be a volunteer at the 2008 Beijing Olympics with her father. They had a lot of precious memories together. Through her work in the four years leading up to London 2012, she was moved by how the Olympic movement inspired professional athletes, artists, performers and different communities in sports and culture.
Watch Valentina’s interview excerpt here.
Laura Aylett has been interested in dancing and performance since she was young. She found out about the opportunity of volunteering for the opening ceremony from a colleague who had volunteered as a Gamesmaker. She went to the audition with a friend where they were asked to complete different kinds of tasks to test their rhythm, coordination and dance ability. She and her friend ended up in different groups; Laura was selected to be a nurse in the in the opening ceremony’s NHS segment, and her friend was selected to dance in the closing ceremony.
Laura shared a few insider stories from rehearsals, like the monotony of the packed lunches, the adorable little girl she worked with, and Danny Boyle’s support for the volunteer performers. The most astonishing moment for Laura was the performance itself, when she saw thousands of LED lights waving in the audience, showing just how big it was.
Watch Laura’s interview excerpt here.
Liz Mac performed at the World Gymnaestrada in Lausanne in 2011 as part of the G.B. team during which she was able to perform in the Olympic Stadium there. It was an amazing experience for her and the adult gymnastic team she belonged to. When they came back to the U.K., she and her friends decided to get involved with the 2012 Olympic Games. In the auditions, Liz found her previous experience in Lausanne had helped her to understand the task they were asked to perform and was pleased to be placed in the ‘Industrial Revolution’ session of the opening ceremony. According to her, the general public was negative about the Olympic Games being held in London at the time but the impact of seeing how successful and creative the opening ceremony was elevated the status of the volunteers as sudden heroes in many minds.
Not long after the event, some of the drummers formed a group to continue to play together and participate in charity events like the BAFTAs, the Lord Mayor’s Parade, St. Patrick’s day parade and in supporting many other events such as drumming for the runners at the London Marathon. Liz is looking forward to volunteering at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and finding new adventures for herself.
Watch Liz Mac’s interview here.
Chris Stacey was involved in the ‘Green and Pleasant’ section at the opening ceremony. He was born and raised in east London and he felt that it was a unique opportunity to be part of the British history by volunteering his time. Chris shared a personal story of how he and his late cousin used to play on the same land where the stadium is now situated. Sadly his cousin passed away a few years before the 2012 Olympics, but Chris thinks his cousin would be very proud of him to perform in a place full of memories of their own.
The overall Olympic experience was life-changing for Chris and the bond between the cast members has made this journey amazing for everyone involved.
Listen to Chris talk about the whole experience here.
Sandra Elsom was born and raised in Newham and was part of the props team for the 2012 Olympic Games. Sandra went to the audition to volunteer as a performer with her best friend but unfortunately didn’t get the part. Not long after the audition, by chance, she found out that the props team of the event were still looking for volunteers. The application process for the props team was straightforward and she was asked to go to the workshop for a trial day, and that was it. The props team worked on several tasks such as painting the colourful chairs at the closing ceremony and making two thousand drums out of buckets. The team put so many hours and so much commitment into making sure all the props were ready for rehearsals and the actual ceremony. Sandra would arrive at the workshop at 6 pm after her full-time job and together with the team, would be make props until 10 pm – Monday to Friday. On Saturday, she would go down to Dagenham to help with the rehearsals. For the five months before the opening ceremony, she completely immersed herself in this Olympic volunteering experience, clearly loving every moment of it.
Listen to Sandra talk about the whole experience here.
Ann Charles was involved in all four ceremonies at the 2012 Olympic Games – Opening and Closing of the Olympic Games as well as the Paralympics. She was an Audience Leader and her job was to lead the audience to do a certain task to achieve a massive crowd effect. They performed in the stands and also in the main arena (‘Field Of Play’). Sometimes they would get called to look after athletes if they needed something while on the tracks during the ceremonies.
After the 2012 Games, Ann and her sister (who had been a dancing nurse in the NHS section) joined P.O.D. – Post Olympic Dance – a dance group for Olympic volunteers to continue the legacy. They get to take dance classes with world-class choreographers and sustain the Olympic dance community. During the pandemic P.O.D. started running dance classes online. Ann was grateful that she got to reconnect with the community, and it was her saving grace during the lockdown.
Listen to Ann talk about the whole experience here.
For the past 10 years, those who volunteered at the Olympic games have been inspiring other people by sharing this life-changing experiences with people they encountered. We hope these stories will bring more love and kindness to the community.
A unique theatre experience where the audience's Olympic 2012 memories are transformed into live performance. FULL DETAILS +
Additional record details
- Contributor: True Heart
- Location: Olympic Stadium
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