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“Sport is just the beginning”, according to a video clip from the Birmingham 2022 Festival! One of the major sports events in the world, which gathers 5,000 athletes and para-athletes, this sporting competition is an opportunity, a pretext to do something bigger, for the city, for the region, for the people. The whole world came to Birmingham during the 11-day competition, some came a bit before, some stayed a bit after, but Birmingham opened itself to the world, as much as to its own population for … no less than six months. The months of preparation leading up to the event also provided many opportunities to create relationships, develop skills, identify talents, inspire vocations, and anticipate a legacy.

Birmingham 2022 Festival was held on two sites in the city centre as well as seven neighborhood sites. Attendees were invited to move, dance, play, watch and listen to performances, and experience sports in different ways. Creative city grants were awarded to groups at the heart of communities, providing opportunities to showcase their work during the festival and to be part of the Games. Although art and sport can be perceived as two different worlds, they address community, togetherness, individual and collective achievement, as well as performance. Matt Kidson, Director of Sport at Birmingham 2022 observed that “bringing them together creates exciting new products”.

a multi-site and multi-activity festival

The Birmingham 2022 festival was a successful celebration of local creativity and grassroot sports, and the impressive figures confirm this success in terms of the number of events, the number of participants and the audience. Such figures give a sense of the dizzying programme offered during the 6 months of the festival, thanks to the thanks to the commitment of hundreds of volunteers and the £12.4 million support from a range of funders including Arts Council England, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Birmingham City Council and Spirit of 2012.

• 9 free festival sites
• + 200 events (individual performances, talks, screenings, exhibitions openings, workshop sessions and opportunities to take part in activities, ranging from a tap-dance on Ironbridge to making carnival costumes in Perry Barr as well as crafting gifts for competing Commonwealth athletes)
• Events made by 82% of creatives from Birmingham and the West Midlands (included 106 community-led projects through the festival’s Creative City initiative, funded by Birmingham City Council)
• + 20,000 crowd attended the outdoor spectacular Wondrous Stories in Centenary Square
• 15,000 keys awarded to the people of Birmingham in Key to the City – an extraordinary gesture which gave anyone and everyone the freedom to visit a range of private and intriguing spaces around the city
• + 4,000,000 streams of On Record – a new album by Birmingham artists featuring specially commissioned tracks such as It’s a Brum Ting by Friendly Fire Band and Champion by UB40
• 242 young people aged 16-30 who identify as D/deaf, disabled, and non-disabled performed in Critical Mass, the festival’s flagship participation programme funded by Spirit of 2012.
• 23 Commonwealth countries contributed and collaborated
• 115 international collaborations.

the inclusive “critical mass” project

If we had to highlight one event in particular, it would be Critical Mass, one of the flagship projects of the festival. This inclusive and ground-breaking dance project embarked 242 young people (aged 16-30) for a year and half journey in the run up to the Games, with the aim of redefining inclusion in mega events. This new dance company brought together both disabled and non-disabled young people from Birmingham and the West Midlands who performed along with professional dancers at the Opening Ceremony of the Commonwealth Games and at the Birmingham Festival. As a unique and unprecedented project, Critical Mass also sought to deliver a unique legacy. A playbook was created, collecting all of the experience acquired during the making of the project, as a way to share the keys to more inclusion in large-scale events and to maximise the impact of such an adventure. This inclusive and integrative project was awarded a £1 million grant by one of the entities managing the legacy of the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, Spirit of 2012, which has “Investing in Happiness” as a motto. As Birmingham 2022 organisers say, the Festival transcended sport and was a “magical combination of beauty, community, participation, diversity and inclusion”.

“Bringing [art and sport] together creates exciting new products”.

— Matt Kidson, Director of Sport, Birmingham 2022