Olympic Rings at Belfast City Hall and Tower Bridge, London 2012
We're sitting here watching event after event on the dozens of free channels BBC added for the Olympics. Belfast has been abuzz since the torch passed through town nearly 2 months ago. On the odd sunny day the lawn in front of the City Hall is covered with spectators and sunbathers watching the games on the big screen. The games have been so exciting and it's particularly enjoyable to watch live in the right time-zone.
There have been a few larger scale events with spectacular light shows and fire works, such as the Land of Giant's at the Titanic slipways at the end of June, which featured acrobatics to tell stories from Belfast. The atmosphere was absolutely electric and added nicely to the series of free events taking place across Northern Ireland for 2012 'Our Time Our Place.'
What has been particularly interesting during the London 2012 Festival has been the dedication to the 'Olympic Truce,' a tradition revived from ancient Greece by the International Olympic Committee in 1992 and ratified by the UN in 1993. The integral spirit of friendship and peace during Olympic times has been actualised this year in a number of projects, a few of which I was able to take part in.
On 21 July at Trafalger Square a series of musicians from Europe played a
concert as part of the BT River of Music. Amira from Sarajevo and the 10 man
band of musicians from different countries across the Balkans called REKA reflected this
idea of the Olympic Truce through the musical mixing of individual musicians and
styles from different parts of a deeply divided region. Amira spoke herself
about the importance of this band, but it wasn’t until they started to play that I
was able to understand how truly beautiful a moment it was.
It was the second time REKA had played together, and it was an absolute
delight to experience. The songs were extremely emotive love ballads
ranging from joyous wedding tunes to lamentations of loss. It was the universality of these emotions that brought their styles and traditions together across the region and indeed among all those listening to the concert from different parts of the world. It was a concert of transcendence, beyond language and beyond conflict.
On a similar trend, back in Belfast an art installation called 'Ambulatorio' opened at a contentious interface barrier in North Belfast. Colombian artist, Oscar Muñoz, internationalised a local issue of segregation and division by designing a piece of work to highlight 'the commonality of loss and remembrance.' This art piece is part of the larger 'Drawing Down the Walls' project where community groups and artists work together to 'imagine a city without barriers.' 
The exhibit was made up of a jumbled aerial view of North Belfast, laid out
under cracked glass and another strong layer of glass for visitors to walk
over. This location just off the Crumlin Road was an area which experienced high levels of violence in the 70s and 80s beside the Flax Street Mills, which led to the construction of secured gates and high fences in 1994.
For over 3 weeks these gates were opened each day for 4 hours to allow residents and visitors to walk through the exhibit. This piece of art transformed a buffer zone of wasted space into a safe and shared cultural space, which connected the experiences from Belfast to other conflicts around the world including the drug-related violence of Colombia that inspired Muñoz's first ever 'Ambulatorio' exhibit. People travelled from different parts of the city to experience this piece of art, drawing attention to the reality of interface division in Belfast for many people who have turned a blind eye to the legacy of segregation in Belfast and to others who are very familiar with interfaces across the city and who are happy to see one more positive story receiving international attention.
The concert at Trafalger Square and the 'Ambulatorio' art exhibit were great successes in the name of the Olympic Truce in that they made real efforts to bring people together in peaceful and constructive ways. In addition to the great competitions, the cultural events, and the general excitement of the 2012 Olympic Games, these special events are a testament to the ongoing efforts to promote change and internationalise important issues of conflict.
