Award for London 2012 Olympic Project
8th October 2013
The work, which invited as many people as possible to ring bells at 0812 on 27 July 2012, opened the first day of the London 2012 Olympic Games as part of the London 2012 Festival.
The campaign was designed to deliver a totally inclusive event, to help buzz grow through word of mouth, and do this while inspiring people’s imaginations about performing the piece. With a limited budget, the team delivered the brand, organisational hub website, developed social media channels and ran two live events on the day (at HMS Belfast and ‘Big Ben’).
As a result, a calculated 2.9 million people participated nationwide on the day (source: LOCOG), 68,000 people downloaded the exclusive ‘All The Bells’ ringtone (Work No. 1372) designed by Creed, social media activity resulted in #AllTheBells being the top UK trend on the morning of the event, reaching an audience of 3, 247,887 people in 24 hours. In addition, hundreds of others rang simultaneously around the world, including Antarctica, Australia, USA and Australia. There were live broadcasts on BBC One’s Breakfast show and BBC Radio 2’s Chris Evans Breakfast Show. Participating institutions included Big Ben (ringing outside its regular schedule for the first time since 1952), the Royal Navy, the National Theatre, the Southbank Centre, Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, and all four parliaments rang in unison.
‘Participative, free and simply wonderful…This was an artistic flashmob of stupendous proportions…mass participative culture at its best capturing the hearts and minds of those who participated’ (Marc Sands, Director of Audiences & Media at Tate; from Independent Evaluations of London 2012 Festival)
