Opening CeremonyCostume

Delivered by the Youth Sport Trust

As part of

The Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic GamesThe Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games mark the moment where the Games begin and the eyes of the world focus on London and the United Kingdom. It is our chance to welcome the world to our Games and to show the world what we, as a nation, can do.

The Opening Ceremonies will be a wonderful mix of celebration, national pride, formalities and friendship. All the different parts will combine to form the Opening Ceremony and one of the most important ways to get across the excitement of this mix is through costume.

Opening Ceremonies rely enormously on visual impact for their success and the combination of colours in the costumes of the thousands of performers, alongside the way those performers move or dance, will create a stunning impact for spectators in the stadium and watching on television.

‘Costume is really important because we have 15,000 volunteers taking part in our Ceremonies and we want them to look their best; over six months we’re going to make about 26,000 costumes for people to wear. Apart from the big sets that we build, everybody will be looking to the costumes to bring colour, lightness and excitement into the show.’

Martin Green, Head of Ceremonies for the London 2012

Olympic and Paralympic Games

Your opening ceremony

Once you have the format of your opening ceremony you need to decide about costumes. You may want to put someone in charge of costumes who, in turn, could look after a team of people to help create the costumes.

Tahra Zafar, Head of Costume for London 2012, has many different teams producing the thousands of costumes needed for the Opening Ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but you’ll just need the one team. One of the advantages of working as a team is not only in the creation of the costumes but also in the ideas that can flow through creative discussions.

When deciding about costumes here are 10 things to think about:1. Theme – what is the main theme of your opening ceremony and how can the costumes

reflect that?2. Planning – talk to one another and work out a plan: start with a ‘creative brief’ that reflects your

own environment and something about who you are and where you live.3. Variety – costumes should be appropriate to the individual and their role in the ceremony.4. Groups – a group of people combined in the right costume can have a big visual impact.5. Ideas – throw all your ideas into the ring. Something that may seem crazy and brilliant but

impossible may be doable when the whole team thinks about how you might achieve it if you really want to.

6. History – costume can very quickly portray a moment in history.7. Colour – colours are unlimited. But always keep in mind the overall theme.8. Material – it doesn’t always have to be cloth; you could use all sorts of materials from plastic to

paper. Think about the impact of texture and sound, as well as colour.

9. One picture – try and imagine the one picture you want everyone watching your ceremony to take away with them – how will the costumes bring this picture to life?

10. Smile – your performers’ faces will set the costume off (they may even be a part of the costume if painted) so make sure they’re smiling.

– For London 2012 the costume department is producing so many costumes you could wear a new costume every day for 63 years. Coincidentally, this is the number of years difference in age between the youngest performers in the Opening Ceremony, who are seven, and the oldest, aged 70.

– There are enough costumes to fill 75 containers, which is equivalent to one third of a container ship that sails around the world’s oceans.

– One mile of costume rails is required to store the costumes.

Did you know?

Costume wisdom from Tahra ZafarThink about placard bearers – in the Opening Ceremony they get the most time on TV so what they wear is very important. Try to think who might have that role in your ceremony: what type of person and what should they wear? ‘See if you can produce a spectacular costume for your placard bearer(s) with a placard to match. Use the internet to research what Host Nations for the Olympic and Paralympic Games have done in the past. Let your ideas run free and remember that complex ideas can often be created from simple resources paired up with a few volunteers.’

Activity idea

– Just by using children in different coloured T-shirts create a set of costumes so that, when grouped together, they create an image. What else could you add to the T-shirts to give the image a greater impact?

– Ask everyone in the class to think of five individual words or phrases that sum up the Olympic and Paralympic Games to them, the school and the local community. Ask them to pick one of those words or phrases and design a costume based on it.

– Look at the years in which the Olympic Games have been hosted in the UK – how has what athletes and people in general wear changed over the years?

– One colourful and important element of the Opening Ceremonies is the Athletes’ Parade where you see all the athletes walking behind a placard bearer and a flag carrier. Try and design a set of costumes based on the theme of ‘flags’ that could be used in your opening ceremony. They could be used in an athletes’ parade or elsewhere in the ceremony. Have a look at the Fun with Flags resource from the World Sport Day website to help you.

3-11 yearsActivity idea

There could be all sorts of different elements in your Opening Ceremony, for example:

1. Athletes’ Parade2. Nations’ flags3. Speeches4. Dance5. Music

– What is the purpose of each of these different elements and how might you use costume to reinforce their purpose?

– Think about combining two or more of these elements in a specific costume design.

– Think about how you might design costumes for a group of people so they combine to create a maximum impact.

– Ask everyone in the class to think of 10 individual words or phrases that sum up the Olympics and Paralympics to them, the school and the local community. Then ask them to pick one of those words or phrases and design a costume based on it.

– Look at the 1908 London Olympics – what was the Opening Ceremony like and did they use costume at all? How do you think it will be different in 2012 and why?

11-19 years

Tahra’s challenge for primary schools

Try and incorporate recycled materials into your costumes. Produce your design first then agree which recycled products you could use in the design. It may not be the whole costume, just parts of it.

Tahra’s challenge for secondary schools

Try to create something that involves different departments or subjects working together, for example art, design and technology, English and history.

An interview with…Tahra Zafar, Head of Costume for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

What did you do before this job? I started my career in theatre and opera. I then went to TV working with puppets including working with Jim Henson, which was wonderful. I was Head of Costume for the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

Do you have a favourite moment in a previous Opening Ceremony?Athens – ‘cube man’: a huge classical sculpture of a head emerges from a placid lake and then breaks up to reveal a Greek statue in the middle. The different parts of the broken up sculpture then rotate about the lake around a central cube over which a man is moving. Beautiful and inspiring!

Do you have a favourite ‘lighting of the Olympic Cauldron’ moment? Two stick out for me, firstly Muhammad Ali at the Atlanta Olympics: truly inspiring. The other one was the arrow being fired to light the flame at Barcelona, which was visually stunning.

In your job role, what will you make happen? I manage different teams producing the thousands of different costumes needed for the Olympic and Paralympic Ceremonies.

What happens to the costumes after the London 2012 Games?Three main things, firstly a selected group of the more iconic ones are given to exhibitors, so some costumes will be displayed by the International Olympic Committee, and others by museums around the UK. Most are given to the performers, and some will be sold.

How do you plan for one of the biggest televised moments in the world? It takes a long time to plan and it must be done meticulously. For example, to put one person in one costume at the right time involves hundreds of people along the way, including the design of the costume, measuring up the individual, making the costume and getting the right costume to the right person at the right time.

What do you have to include within your element, as outlined in the Olympic or Paralympic Charter? Nothing really in terms of official protocol but there is a rail of clothes that I am responsible for that we keep to one side for VIPs in case, for example, one of them might need a spare suit due to a spilt cup of coffee!

What is your one wish for the London 2012 Olympic or Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony? For it to be a really good show and for it to show how fantastic and creative the British people are.

Is there any difference between managing the costumes for the Olympic Opening Ceremony and the Paralympic Opening Ceremony?No – we ‘simply’ cover everyone and everything in every way.

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Watch out for… a teddy bear belonging to my daughter, which we used at one practice parade and is now being used in the Opening Ceremony – see if you can spot it!