London 2012 Festival in the East Midlands

Games Time is a spectacular, free, live outdoor stage show combining music, video, fireworks, professional dancers and 160 members of the local community.

Games Time made its debut to great acclaim in front of 10,000 spectators on the sea-front at Skegness in July 2011.New performances will be created in 2012 in collaboration with communities in Loughborough, Northampton and Derby.

The Games Time team is led by Déda Producing and Lea Anderson (Artistic Director), Walk the Plank, Mahogany, Mick McNicholas, ArtsAgenda and QUAD.

Games Time is one of just four large scale community celebrations commissioned by Legacy Trust UK, designed to create a cultural legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Games Time will tour the East Midlands throughout the summer of 2012 -

Southfields Park, Loughborough, Saturday 9 June

Delapre Park, Northampton, Saturday 7 July

Darley Park, Derby, Saturday 22 September

For further information please visit www.gamestime.org.uk

Image: Kevin Ryan

The Festival of Chaos brings three fresh new adaptations of classic plays to the stage – Euripides’ The Bacchae (adapted by Rosanna Lowe), Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding (adapted by Tommy Murphy), and Hedda Gabler (adapted by Andrew Upton) by Henrik Ibsen.

In re-imagining these plays, Royal & Derngate's director Laurie Sansom examines the forgotten power of the god Dionysus, and invites him back to tear apart the comfort and conventions of our material world. Played out across the ages, and across continents, it takes us from the birthplace of the Olympics to the claustrophobia of 19^th Century Scandinavia, and via rural Spain to a money-hungry city increasingly out of touch with its roots.

Friday 18 May – Saturday 28 July

For further information please visit www.royalandderngate.co.uk

Mandala is a bold new collaboration between sampad South Asian arts, New Art Exchange and arts & technology organisation, seeper. This unique open air show will see Nottingham Council House spectacularly illuminated in colour and light, transformed from its classical facade to take on breathtaking new forms.

Real-time tracking facilities will project 3D interactive moving images of live South Asian dance and music onto the building, with performances by world-class artists including Anoushka Shankar and Talvin Singh.

Mandala will feature as part of the opening weekend celebrations of World Event Young Artists on 9 September 2012.

For further information please visit www.sampad.org.uk or www.seeper.com

Wherever you are on Friday 27 July at 8am, we want you to ring your bell! Everyone in the UK is invited to ring a bell of any sort as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes to celebrate the opening day of the Olympics.

Join in at home, at work or at a ringing event in your area. Find out more and register to take part at Allthebells.com and follow the project on Facebook and Twitter.

For further information please visit www.allthebells.com