1500 children to help launch Shropshire Olympian Festival
Over 1500 children from 40 Shropshire primary schools will attend the launch of The Shropshire Olympian Festival – a recreation of the 1864 event – on Friday 17 June at the Quarry in Shrewsbury.
There will be an opening ceremony at 10am presided over by Shropshire MPs Daniel Kawczinski and Philip Dunne, before a mass synchronized Victorian PE drill for all participants.
During the next three hours the Key Stage 2-aged school children will take part in a range of athletic and sporting competitions throughout the Quarry, as well as competitions in dance, poetry, singing, recitation and the visual arts.
The Schools Day event will be closed by Olympic athlete and former 5000 metre world record holder David Moorcroft OBE at 2pm with a celebration of the medal winners and a massed choral rendition of the Shropshire Olympian Festival anthem.
The original games were for ‘literary and fine art entertainment and for skill and strength in athletic exercise’ and this is precisely the ethos and the spirit of the Olympics that will be re-created.
Since January 2011 Shropshire primary schools have been building up to this event by using education resource material developed by Shropshire Council’s curriculum advisory service.
Jonathan Pygott, Head Teacher of Broseley Primary School, said:
“It’s a fantastic resource with enough material to cover just about every subject in the curriculum. Our children have been using it to prepare for the Shropshire Olympian Festival and give the event some context.”
The resource provides an insight into the world in which Brookes lived and worked, including the conditions and the environment and the health of the Society he tried to develop.
In 1864 the living conditions and public health were quite different from today. Records show that a child’s diet would be a cause for grave concern by today’s standards, and in the years preceding the Shropshire Olympian Festival there was no proper sewage system for Shrewsbury.
The river Severn, which wraps around the town, bred cholera and, had it not been for ignorance of waterborne diseases, the Quarry Park, in its riverside setting, would have been the last place people would want to gather in numbers – let alone choose for their Olympian Festival.
In 1864 William Penny Brookes brought the Shropshire Olympian Festival to Shrewsbury from its home in Much Wenlock and it proved such a hit that the following year (1865) the National Olympic Association was established and the Olympian movement took another step towards the international event we recognise today.
Chris Cannon, Chairman of the Wenlock Olympian Society said:
“The Shropshire Olympian Festival gives everyone in Shropshire the opportunity to celebrate the role that this county has in inspiring people to join together and lead healthier lives through sport and the arts, especially as the time approaches when the world comes to London to share in Brookes’ Olympian dream in 2012.”
The Shropshire Olympian Festival has won a government Inspire Mark in recognition of its significance to London 2012 and it is free to everyone through the generous support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Arts Council England. Shropshire Council is also working in partnership with Shrewsbury Town Council, Shrewsbury Carnival and BBC Radio Shropshire to deliver this historic event.
Councillor Mike Owen, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for culture said:
“Here’s a chance to celebrate a great event in our past that brought together people from all over our far-flung country in friendly rivalry and inspired subsequent generations to develop the Olympian Festival into the international event we recognize today.”
All this information and more can be found at www.shropshire1864.org.uk.
