Filmmaker And Former Canadian Olympian Proposes Olympics Of The Arts

Sylvia Sweeney, a filmmaker and former Olympic basketball player, has proposed creating an Olympics which will celebrate emerging artists from around the world in five categories: film, dance, music, literature and visual arts. According to the NATIONAL POST, if approved, the group plans to stage an event every four years that would run in between the Olympic summer games.

The Post reports that the proposal includes making agreements with various existing Olympic broadcasters -- including NBC, CBC and Japan's NHK -- to sponsor the events which would be competition based using such already existing events such as International Stepping Stones (a competition for classical musicians) and the Grammys as Olympic qualifying events. The winners of those events would perform at the Olympics of the Arts in 2006, the proposed first year of the event.

Sweeney, who twice represented Canada as an Olympic basketball player, has as a filmmaker, made IN THE KEY OF OSCAR about her Uncle jazz musician Oscar Peterson, as well as BREAKING THE ICE: THE MARY ANN SHADD STORY. (Shadd started the first integrated school in Canada and was the first female newspaper editor and first female black lawyer in North America)

Among other credits, Sweeney was also Executive Producer of LANDED, a 26 part series profiling the lives and contributions of immigrant women to Canada, and Director of THE PACKWOOD FAMILY-HYMN TO FREEDOM, a documentary in a four part history series of black communities in Canada.

The Post reports that she has received letters of support from several Canadian members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and some former Olympic athletes, and is now preparing to present the plan to the IOC's arts committee at a meeting scheduled for 2001 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Post believes that the chances of the proposal being accepted are strong.

"The project is interesting because it's one that lends itself to television," IOC vice-president Dick Pound told the Post. "It could be desirable to those involved in the Olympics that are to date only sports sponsors."

Pound added, according to the Post, that [The project] "also allows us to extend our reach into the cultural component of the Olympics."

Arts Wire has not yet been able to ascertain if the proposed Olympics for the Arts are intended to replace the Olympic Festivals of the Arts which focus primarily on the role of arts in the host nation but traditionally have been outward-looking, placing that cultural identity in a global context. (For instance, Arts Festival exhibitions in the lead-up to the 1996 Atlanta Games included SOUTHERN CROSSROADS, a reflection on life in the United States' Deep South, and THE OLYMPIC WOMAN, chronicling the history of women in the modern Games.)

The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games reports that when Pierre de Coubertin instigated the first Olympic Games of the modern era in 1896, he hoped the Games would come to represent excellence not only in the sporting arena, but also in a broad range of cultural endeavors.

Art Competitions were a part of the Olympics during the first half of the 20th century.

However, the Post quotes Bruce Kidd, dean of the physical education department at the University of Toronto, as saying that the role of art in the Games changed from competitions to festivals for various reasons, but none more so than the difficulty of judging something that is so subjective.

"When the IOC was deciding what to do during the post World War II era, one of the big questions was, how do you have a cross-cultural artistic competition and judge it? I think that consideration is still very valid if not more so today," Kidd commented, according to the Post.

Sources/resources:

Kim Hanson
"Swifter, higher, stronger -- and more artistic
Former Olympian wants to revive competition in arts"
THE NATIONAL POST -- http://www.nationalpost.com
August 31, 2000

BREAKING THE ICE: THE MARY ANN SHADD STORY -- http://www.whitepinepictures.com/seeds/

SYDNEY 2000 OLYMPIC GAMES -- http://www.olympics.com/eng/

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