Aiming for gold standard as region’s arts take on the Olympics

As creative director of the Imove project, Tessa admits raising awareness of what the group was trying to achieve was difficult in the early days and the more recent public spending cuts have inevitably raised questions about the wisdom of investing millions in a Cultural Olympiad.

However, the cash has now been spent and during the next eight months, as the fruits of project come to bear, she hopes any criticisms will be answered.

“A lot of time has been spent developing the projects and for a while a lot of people weren’t even aware of Imove,” says Tessa, who has worked in the arts in Yorkshire for more than two decades. “You can talk about a project all you like, but it’s only when the individual events start being staged that it becomes something people take notice of. Certainly awareness has grown and 2012 is our big year.”

For those who doubted Imove could deliver on its promises, two early projects were evidence that the money had been well spent. Last year The Mill – City of Dreams, which transformed a derelict building in Bradford into a theatre space, and Mapping the City, which took performance to the streets of Hull, won both critical and crucially audience support.

“There is a danger with cultural programmes of this kind that they end up being concentrated in a region’s major cities,” says Tessa. “Right from the outset we were determined that we had to deliver a programme which ran across Yorkshire and which also made use of non-traditional arts spaces.”

So, in the next few months, while Imove will stage events in the likes of the Northern School of Dance and the National Media Museum, the programme also includes sea swimming in Scarborough, a cycling opera in Scunthorpe and Synchronised, which aims to transform Ponds Forge into an aquatic stage. For Tessa, it’s the sheer scope of the events which is key.

“When you start a project like this there is no point hanging on the coat tails of London,” she says. “We wanted to say: ‘Look, this is Yorkshire and look what a creative powerhouse it is’.”

From exhibitions to stage productions and street performance, Imove certainly has all bases covered, but its lasting legacy is arguably more difficult to define.

Some of the projects, like Mapping the City, have already been and gone, but Tessa remains confident that its impact will be felt long after the final medals of the Games have been handed out.

“There are clearly some projects which naturally have a life after the Olympics,” she says, referring to Stanza Stones, which has created a permanent poetry trail from Marsden to Ilkley marked by stones carved with verse.

“However, the work we have done has also shown there is a different model of working, one which is about collaboration and bringing two apparently diverse areas like sport and art into a whole.”

While nothing has been finalised, there are also plans for the work of Imove to continue beyond the summer.

However, for now Tessa has her eye set firmly on the next few months.

“It’s the British way to be a little cynical about these kind of big events, but when it comes to it we all want to join in the party and be part of it.”

For a full programme of events visit www.imoveand.com