Cardiff hosts Festival with an arty slant

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The Maindy Centre in Cardiff played host to a StreetGames Festival - Summer Mayhem - last Saturday (23rd June). The Festival marked the start of the Centre becoming a central hub for StreetGames activities in the Cardiff area and over 200 local youngsters attended.

The young people had the chance to try five different activities, including football, rock climbing and a BMX challenge. To encourage them to take part, those who completed all five were then entered into a prize draw to win an iPad or BMX.

The event was run by Cardiff City Council and the Maindy Centre, in conjunction with StreetGames. 

Also in attendance was street artist Luke Embden who worked with the participants to create the second of seven pieces of artwork that will be showcased at Coca-Cola zones at Olympic venues during the London 2012 Olympic Games this summer. 

The artwork (pictured), commissioned by Coca-Cola Great Britain, celebrates EXCELLENCE, one of the three universal Olympic values (Respect, Excellence, Friendship) and four Paralympic values (Courage, Determination, Inspiration and Equality) acknowledged by the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Pierre de Coubertin. 

Coca-Cola Great Britain is also rewarding one lucky youngster from each city with a pair of tickets to an Olympic event at London 2012. The winner will be the participant who best describes what the Olympic Value shown in the artwork means to them. 

For Cardiff, the winner was Holly Smith, 14, from the Maindy StreetGames project. Holly secured her tickets to the Games after her words on ‘what excellence means to you’ were chosen to appear in the City’s artwork which will feature in Coca-Cola zones during the Olympic Games this summer.  

Holly’s words were: “Excellence is being the best that you can be”.

Caro Wild, StreetGames Wales Manager, said: “Saturday’s Festival was a great way to start the new StreetGames sessions in Maindy. It was brilliant to see all the sessions being led by young volunteers - they are the true local heroes. We would like to thank all the staff and volunteers at the Maindy Centre for their hard work organising this event.”

Artist Luke Embden said: “It’s great to come to Glasgow and see the young people here engaging in this project around the Olympic and Paralympics values. To many of these young people sport is the centre of their lives; it’s helped them to stay off the streets and keep out of trouble and in some cases even helped them to get a job through volunteering and coaching too.  For them, sport is a real life changer and the Olympic and Paralympic values still mean something on many levels.” 

Liz Lowe, Citizenship Manager at Coca-Cola Great Britain, said: “The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are  the most exciting opportunities we have as a Worldwide Partner to engage young people and help to build a legacy of increased grassroots sports participation.

“We commissioned the Olympic and Paralympic Values artwork to encourage our young people to make their mark for the London 2012 Games and inspire them into sport by exploring what the Olympic and Paralympic values mean to them. 

“We’re greatly looking forward to seeing the final artwork from the seven cities and seeing them go on show this summer at the Games.”