Cultural Health Warning -

Exactly how free is that free lunch?

Whether it's BP sponsorship at the Tate or the 'Cultural Olympiad', the use of the arts as a 'soft marketing' tool has a capacity to undermine their value and spoil the enjoyment of those who read the small print and care about context.

This event is part of CREATE10 - CREATE being the glossy annual 2012 'Olympic 5 Boroughs' branding vehicle for co-opting creative activities in the area into the service of Olympics promotion and the corporate self-promotion of the local authorities, all at our expense.

The fact that it describes itself as "world class" should be sufficient warning - as is the claim to be "celebrating". Just the sort of thing that can be expected to stay safely out of the reach of public service cuts.

According to Tower Hamlets council it is "nicknamed the festival of festivals" - (by the organisers presumably) - "is part of the Cultural Olympiad" and "will celebrate the wealth of homegrown artistic talent, cultural institutions and iconic arts venues that thrive in East and South East London."

As a sub-brand of the Cultural Olympiad it's true to the principles of its parent pseudo-festival and operates by parasitising any previously autonomous activity that might be happening in East London in the summer, dragging them into the festival listing and reducing them to windowdressing.

Hackney set the pace here by taking the existing annual Mare De Gras carnival, hiring new events organisers and marketers and relaunching it as the Olympics-friendly Hackney One Carnival. while pretending it was an exciting new event. So you get something you had before but pay more for it, and watch it be turned into a shameless promotional tool into the bargain.

The "5 Boroughs Unit" (or Programme) behind CREATE is a mysterious administrative excrescence of the Olympic boroughs costing council tax payers around a million a year to run, inevitably operated from Hackney Council.

The job of 'Executive Director' is advertised here for £125K
5 Boroughs One Vision is its motto - 5 Boroughs Lots of Spin more like.

It has its own 'Host Boroughs Culture Team' to have those all-important meetings, polish up the website and perform vague 'ambassadorial' functions without which creative life in the East End would presumably descend back into the dark ages before we won the Bid - for of course :

"In 2005, as part of the bid process for the 2012 Games the five host boroughs committed to delivering a joint cultural programme leading up to 2012 and beyond"

As the Culture Team are far too busy to do everything there is £50,000 available for a marketing consultancy to "devise, execute and evaluate the CREATE 2010 marketing strategy and campaign" and "Develop innovative and creative brand identity and marketing solutions for CREATE" .

Particularly sad is the existence of CREATE events like ROAM which received this year's Art award.

Possibly the ultimate in disappearing up its own backside meta-hijacking, it incorporates activities such as fishing, birdwatching and swimming and a talk on wild plants into "possibly the largest participatory art award in the UK",

Without any apparent sense of irony "It is a paen to a slower pace of life, and to an appreciation of the natural beauty that peeks out from even the most urban east London environment, if only you know where to look" - despite allowing itself to be used to promote the Olympic project that is responsible for the destruction of so many of those places of natural beauty and wildlife habitat - even those they had promised to retain.

Can we really not have lunch and a conversation or look at wild plants (sorry, native species - I don't think there are many actual wild plants left on the made-over Greenway, someone seems to have had an accident with a bag of cornflower seed though) without a world class festival complete with pink London2012.com lookalike website and a whole superstructure of administrators, directors and graphic designers?

Charlie