One (other) thing we’ve learnt from the Olympics

Team GB: sporting heroes for a new generation of sports stars. But how do we translate their success into inspiration for creatives?

Lovely Jessica Duchen has listed a few things we can learn from the Olympics.

With the arts in mind and the slogan ‘inspire a generation’ still ringing in my ears, I’ve got one (or maybe two) more to add to the list.

We should be casting the inspiring net a little wider than just sport. Not every kid’s chosen form of self-expression will be sport. Some might still prefer the pull of the practise room over the swimming pool.

Come the new term in September, teachers across the curriculum will need to find a punchy way of contextualising the Olympics in the minds of their audience. In some cases teachers will need to reframe the message making it relevant to a kid who needs to be encouraged to aim high and work hard in pursuit of the best performance, the best grade or a seat in a county youth orchestra or the NYO.

And there’ll need to be judicious management of expectations too. Not everyone will be gold medallists. Some will have to make do with playing second fiddle or making do with the school orchestra.

The challenge for all of us at this stage in the Olympics is to translate what our emotional responses to the Games have shown us into something that fits into our chosen field and inspires the next generation at the same time.

And when we’ve done that, we’ll have to do the same thing with the Paralympics. That surely will be the toughest and most inspirational lesson for us all. An entirely different beast.