The women’s cycle road race during the London Olympics, Box Hill, Surrey, 29 July 2012. Part of my work on the XXX Olympiad.

And the the XXX Olympiad is underway with Danny Boyle’s view of Britain at the Opening Ceremony, including his depiction of the Industrial Revolution. You can read Polly Toynbee’s review here.

I’ve been granted access to the 2012 London Olympics by the IOC to produce an alternative look at the Games. Over the next four Saturday’s, starting on 29 July, you’ll be able to see my dispatches in the FT Weekend Magazine and .

Photograph: Robert Dover”s Olimpick Games, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, 30 May 2008.

“An Olympic Games held in London in 2012 will mark a unique anniversary – it will be exactly 400 years from the moment that the first stirrings of Britain”s Olympic beginnings can be identified”. This statement was made by no other than the British Olympic Association in their successful bid for the 2012 London Olympic Games!
They continued, “In 1612 in the tiny village (we forgive them that) of Chipping Campden, Robert Dover opened the first “Cotswold Olimpicks”, an annual sporting fair that honoured the ancient Games of Greece. Those early “Olimpick” competitors were as remote as you could imagine from the Olympic stars of today, and the “sports” included singlestick, wrestling, jumping in sacks, dancing and even shin-kicking.

But whatever the eccentric nature of the event, this was the pre-dawn of the Olympic Movement, and the Cotswold Games began the historical thread in Britain that was ultimately to lead to the creation of the modern Olympics.

My photograph was taken in 2008 when I attended the games during the making of We English. Read more about the history of the Olimpick Games .

Paul Kelly, Working Class Movement Library, 19 May 2012

This is one of several videos that I shot at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford as part of the Museums at Night event. Each film captures the thoughts of local campaigners and activists as they discuss how the biggest public spending cuts in a generation have affect them. People spoke about what they cared about blackjack and in some cases brought along an object that summed up what they do or is important to their cause.

The Working Class Movement Library is a unique collection that captures over 200 years of organising and campaigning by ordinary men and women who”ve wanted to improve their world. For more information go to: wcml.org.uk

Pierdom is on show at The Photographers’ Gallery, Print Room until 9 September 2012.

My print ‘Leeds City Council, 23rd February 2011’ from Star Chambers nestled between work by David Spero and Andy Goldsworthy in the Uncommon Ground exhibition at Flowers Gallery. On show until 1 September.

I had the great pleasure of attending the opening of Daniel Meadows’ show Early Photographic Works at Ffotogallery last night. It was also his retirement party from Cardiff University where he taught digital storytelling. A photographic form he has very much pioneered over the past decade.

The photograph above shows him discussing one of the characters in his most well known digital stories, that of Florence Alma Snoad (seen stood next to Daniel and below in 1973 when she was photographed for Daniel’s Free Photographic Omnibus project). You can watch Daniel’s film about Florence here.

 

And here are a couple of photographs from his Ffotogallery exhibition, which is on show until 8 September.

From Butlin’s by the Sea, 1972 (c) Daniel Meadows
From Free Photographic Omnibus, 1973 – 1974 (c) Daniel Meadows

We English exhibited in the Great British Public show at St Pancras International as part of the London Festival of Photography. The exhibition is now on show at White Cloth Gallery in Leeds.

Pyro Boy in action at Winter Blast, Arizona, 2008.