Might The Crying Games Become The Smiling Games?

I am not a great fan of sport. Neither participating or watching.

But over the last fortnight I have been keen to see the progress of athletes, and I have been as absorbed as anyone in the emotion of ceremonies and medal presentations alike.

The sight not just of the Union Jack being raised if we have won gold, but listening intently to the unfamiliar sounds of national anthems from around the world.

Perhaps from the outset I was gripped, when the opening ceremony seemed to capture in an extraordinary way everything that has led us to this moment in the present.

I have watched the opening ceremony several times since I first had the foresight to record it, and I have watched the opening hour once again just yesterday, perhaps beginning to feel that as the closing ceremony comes into sight, that I wanted to be reminded of that fabulous opening.

It is difficult to imagine how something so spectacular could be imagined, but in a strange way I have spent my entire professional life working to create just such events, with a combination of professionals and amateurs.

It is perhaps something that we are very good at in Britain, it is often said that more people are involved in some way as participants in the performing arts as amateurs than the total number of spectators for a weekend's football matches.

When the Arts Council of England was founded in I believe 1951, out of The Festival Of Britain, and the sense of a nation reborn after an extraordinary world conflict, it perhaps for the first time created an unnatural distinction between the professional arts and what had been happening for decades, perhaps centuries, in most communities throughout the land.

We do not have to look any further than Handel's great oratorio The Messiah to appreciate that it has been the committed amateur that has been the engine of the Arts in Britain over the years.

For some years, I was the Development Director for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Edinburgh, one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world.

As an orchestra of 37 full-time players, expanding on occasion as required by the music performed, the SCO has made numerous recordings from Opera and of Choral music, and perhaps not unusually, whenever it has needed to employ the United voices of a choir, it has turned to its own trained choir.

But this is not a professional choir, but a choir of dedicated amateurs, admittedly conducted and trained by a professional Choir Master, but nevertheless composed of people whose living is not derived from their participation professionally in music.

Many orchestras in modern Britain do have the services of a professional choir, as indeed most opera companies will have their own in-house professional chorus.

But it is easily forgotten that this has only been the case for the past 50 or so years since funding has been possible through the Arts Councils of Great Britain.

And over and above the network of professional choirs and choruses, there is still an important sector of impassioned amateurs.

It has been a stroke of genius to make this level of participation part of the opening of these extraordinary games, which have begun to be described as the crying games, as people have begun to reflect back on what has taken place during this 30th Olympiad.

I have met and worked with the Artistic Director of the opening ceremony, Jude Kelly, when she was the Artistic Director of an important regional theatre in Leeds when I was a humble Education Officer for Opera North based in the same city.

It is therefore unsurprising to me the way in which so many volunteers have become involved in this extraordinary pageant.

My own career within the professional Arts took place as a consequence of my involvement as a volunteer in something perhaps not so dissimilar, the creation of a musical theatre celebration of the City of Leeds.

I was at the time involved in creative writing on a regular basis, and as a group of creative writers, we were approached to be involved in the creation and performance of a community opera.

In the precincts of the University of Leeds, in the open air, around 300 people told through a pageant, the story of how the City had come about, and what its present concerns were, and what it perhaps might become in the future.

Over the course of more than a month, performances were developed and refined with the help of a professional Opera Director. A chorus of amateur voices were taught how to sing an original score composed by a young professional composer, and three performances took place to an audience of more than 2000 people.

As a writing group, we commenced work with a workshop led by the poet that was to become the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

We then met together over several weeks, supported by a local creative writing specialist, to come up with ideas for ways in which we could explore the open theme of Leeds past, present and future.

Whilst most of the participants and performers were to be drawn from the local community, we had the involvement of one professional opera singer, and of course the professional team leading and shaping our work.

The end result for me was life changing, in the sense that I soon made the transition from the work I had been doing to becoming a junior in the Community and Education Department at Opera North.

I took a substantial cut in salary, but for the next 20 years, I found myself working alongside profoundly talented artists in the worlds of opera and classical music, finding ways in which their abilities could inspire and be communicated to people that had never experienced these artforms.

By the time that I was forced to stop work at the age of 43 because of multiple sclerosis, I was still concerned with my own creative writing, but I have been inspired by working closely with some of the most talented musicians, singers, writers and composers of our generation.

And so perhaps I am well placed to confirm that the experiences I have seen take place in this Olympiad may well have the potential to change the lives of so many people.

I find myself in the strange position of having been rather cynical at the outset, and since the opening ceremony, I have become totally convinced that participation alone - let alone the success we have seen - and the emotions associated with it, will have made this a strangely cathartic experience.

Perhaps it is the fact that the Olympic movement is so concerned with the peaceful coming together of nations in competition that has so moved so many people.

That we have been able as a nation to host this event so successfully must serve as some kind of therapeutic boost to our flagging sense of self.

It is of course the first time that a country has hosted the modern Olympics on three occasions, and perhaps this too is significant.

We first hosted the Olympics in 1908, just at the cusp of the First World War, when an Empire began to fade.

The second occasion was in 1948, and was described as the Austerity Olympics after we had survived the second world war. And coincidentally, the year in which the British Empire became the British Commonwealth.

And at this point in our times, you could say it is another Austerity Olympics, in that we are suffering a depressed business environment, and some would say could ill afford the £9 billion cost of hosting the games.

And yet, as I write this on the final day of the 30th Olympiad, it is as if it has been more than worth the cost, in the way that it has brought a nation together, and demonstrated that we can achieve something extraordinarily positive.

It is as if it has been a transformative therapy session, teaching us what we can achieve if only we have the vision.

As people, as human beings, and as a planet.

In 1908, just 22 nations took part, but this year 204 nations took part, and each took the oath that has bound us all together in this experience.

By the time the opening ceremony had taken place, I was convinced that it was not through medal successes that the games would be measured.

The fact that we have been so successful is wonderful, and has been perhaps the catalyst for our sense of national catharsis.

But it has been simply taking part, not winning, that has been most important.

It is as if the Olympic movement has been more successful than The United Nations at bringing nations together, in peace and in celebration of what can be achieved.

Let us truly hope that what has been described as the crying games can become known as the smiling games as we look back on them.