Paralympic Flame Celebration to launch Games in fiery mini-festival in Aylesbury

Event: Aylesbury Paralympic Flame Celebration, Market Square, Aylesbury, August 28 2012

A giant kettle which boils and steams, silk flame makers, smoke and bubble machines and a 20-minute collaborative performance between dancers, film-makers and artists painting and drawing live – the Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury might never see a Tuesday like this late August one again.

Launching the Paralympics, which begin the following day, the Paralympic Flame Celebration features work from the Cultural Olympiad (the creative strand of the Olympics), including many of the finest deaf and disabled artists doing their stuff in Britain today.

There’s plenty to choose from in a mini-festival lasting more than 12 hours, but folk musician and fiddle extraordinaire Eliza Carthy’s early evening performance should be a highlight, not to mention Brewing Up, in which carnival arts exhibitionists attempt to define what it takes to make a perfect cup of tea.

The collaborative fireworks come from international visual artist Rachel Gadsden, Abigail Norris, whose film has been inspired by the forthcoming Paralympics, and young disabled dancers choreographed by Freddie Opoku-Addaie.

Some of them come from Stoke Mandeville, known as the birthplace of the Paralympic movements. Its pioneering hospital is at the centre of film screenings and an exhibition.

There’s also the premiere of Light up the World, an animation made by 497 young disabled and non-disabled young people crossing 12 countries, and a fiery finale manned by The World Famous, who describe themselves as “pyrotechnic wizards” and plan to project images onto the town’s Courthouse.

“The Paralympic Flame Festival will be pretty spectacular,” says Caterina Loriggio, the Creative Programmer for London 2012 in the south-east.

“The national celebrations culminate at Stoke Mandeville before the overnight relay begins. There will be three excellent new outdoor arts commissions in Aylesbury on the evening. It really is a once-in-a-lifetime line-up.”

The flame continues to the Opening Ceremony in London the following evening, carried by hundreds of torchbearers.

• Celebration starts at 10am. The exhibition is at the Bowls Centre in Aylesbury from August 29 – September 16 2012.

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