AS TOLD TO
Duke of York Square rocked during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, with more than 3,000 people at a time dancing and singing as they watched the event on big screens. Centre manager Will Lewis is still a bit astonished by it all
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WE HAD A GREAT BIG PARTY, essentially. We knew we had somehow to engage with the Olympic Games and do it in a way that
didn’t violate the brand guidelines laid down by the organising committee, which were very strict. So, the concept was Game on for Summer. We did three big blue ribbon events. the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony and the 100m final. The opening ceremony just took us totally by surprise in the most amazing way. We had about 3,000 people in the square on the night of the opening ceremony. It was incredible, it was huge. We encouraged people to bring their hampers, their picnics, their own chairs. There weren’t that many free screenings of the opening ceremony in London, strangely, and so we were pretty unique.
The closing ceremony was even better, and rather emotional. Again, we had approximately 3,000 people singing Wonderwall in unison and dancing along to every other band that was playing that night. We also screened every other day during the day. We tried to pick the medals finals and events of interest, but took care to specifically screen sports we knew would be of interest to the local community.We went more for sailing, equestrian, tennis, track and field and just tried to get a good broad appeal of events. All through the summer, we’ve had a partnership with Pommery champagne. They worked with us on the Jubilee and Wimbledon screenings and they built a nice big champagne pavilion at the front of the square right by King’s Road. We’ve had nothing but positive feedback to the Olympic events. The momentum just grew and grew, the whole atmosphere was incredible. There were a lot of positive comments on Twitter.
The closing ceremony in particular was a really nice atmosphere. People were charged in a very emotional way and it felt as if we were all part of the Olympics and the spirit of what was going on.
The next major event will be Christmas, we’re taking a breather through the autumn. We’re opening Santa’s grotto on November 10 and we’ll have a Christmas lights switch on party and a carol service at Holy Trinity. There’ll be loads of activities and it will be totally kids and family orientated.
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