ELLE.COM/UK Nove mbe r 2O19Hair and make - up: Lou Box at S Management using Kjær Weisand Kevin Murphy. Additional photography: Getty Images.
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issues. One: you have to ensure that the city is set up for life after
the games, when the sports fans and the organising committee
have rolled out of town. Two: if you’re smart, you use the Olympics
as a cultural shop window to the world about what you’ve got.
If you get it right, you benefit from something called the ‘Olympic
bounce’ – millions of tourists visiting the city and, rather more crucially,
spending their money in the following years.
Simons went to town on dressing that window. She helped to
suspend dancers from The Millennium Bridge
and the 135m-tall London Eye. She organised
Hatwalk. She persuaded Westminster Council
and the Met Police to let her put an actual
pop-up circus in Piccadilly Circus, complete
with flying angels and thousands of white
feathers that were released from the sky and
found days later, as far away as the Eurostar
in Paris. It was the first time that Piccadilly
Circus had been shut since the Second World
War and VE Day. Her cultural chicanery
led to hundreds of column inches in the media,
cementing London’s status as the madcap
artistic hub of the world. It was, by all account, genius. And, shortly
after, London received a record number of visitors.er major focus now is East Bank, which she describes
as ‘making good on (the) promise of a legacy’ sold
to the people of east London after the 2O12
Olympics. The BBC is moving a huge new music
hub there, the rather magical-sounding Sugar
House Island will be also created, the UK’s first talent house for urban
culture. There will be a fashion district, led by The London College
of Fashion, with affordable work spaces for those starting out in the
industry. It should, if she can deliver it all, be one of the most astounding
legacies an Olympics has ever left behind.
That evening, some hours after I leave Simons’s office, I take the
train across Blackfriars Bridge. Before it comes into the station, it
halts briefly over the Thames. Commuters look up from their phones
as we all collectively peer out. I’ve never looked at the city from
this vantage point before, but there, stretching out into the night is
a sea of lights – pink, purple, green and amber, stretching all the
way down the cur ve of the river. It’s the Illuminated River project:
a decade-in-the-making gift to us all by City Hall’s secret elf.2O12 SUMMER OLYMPICS
Her madcap cultural calendar of
events for the 2012 Games
included designing new hats for
London’s historial statues.CHUBBY HEARTS PROJECT
When Anya Hindmarch
wanted to put 29 giant
hearts across London, Simons
helped do the joyful honours.THE FOURTH PLINTH
Simons was instrumental in putting
Marc Quinn’s statue of pregnant
disabled artist Alison Lapper on
Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth.MILLICENT FAWCETT
On the 100th anniversary of
the vote for women, Simons
helped get Millicent Fawcett
immortalised in Parliament Square.JUSTINE SIMONS’ INFLUENTIAL LONDON MOMEN TS
It was at primary school that things changed for her, after she joined
a youth dance group set up by a young teacher, Mrs Devett. She
signed up, travelled across the country with it, meeting kids from all
types of backgrounds...and excelled. ‘I wasn’t in the top stream at
school, didn’t read a lot of books or anything like that,’ she admits.
‘But I loved getting involved in that group. If I’d just had an academic
life [at school], I’d only be half a person. I wouldn’t have worked out
who I was or what I cared about.’ She pauses. ‘That group is the reason
I’m doing this job today... without a doubt.’
A career in the contemporary dance world
followed. She got a bursary from the Arts
Council to train as a dance producer. One of the
women she shadowed was Ruth Mackenzie,
who was running the Nottingham Playhouse.
Mackenzie, who is now the first woman to run
the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, became a
guiding light. (‘We sort of co-mentor one another
now.’) After years running arts festivals and
dance venues across the country, Simons joined
City Hall as the first Head of Culture in 2OO2.
‘When I first got here I was a bit confused
about the job, because at that point City Hall [had just been]
created and there wasn’t much power. Or budget. I was a bit like,
“ We’ve got no power, we’ve got no money... What’s the job?”’
The job snowballed quickly. One of the first projects in her in-tray
was the 2O12 Summer Olympics. How, she thought, could she
showcase London’s culture to the world? At a sporting event. Fortuitously,
Mackenzie had also found herself working on the Olympics, directing
The Cultural Olympiad, a programme of cultural events that ran across
the country to support both the Olympics and the Paralympics.
What was unique about having two women, who were old
friends, run the biggest event the country had ever seen was the
partnership they were able to create. One of the things both women
had learned from other cities who had hosted the games was that
the city administration (Simons’ job) did its own thing, while the
Olympiad (Mackenzie’s job) also did its own thing. ‘And never
the twain shall meet,’ she says, recalling the all-nighters and high
jinks of the time. ‘But because Ruth and I were in these two pivotal
roles, we were very feisty about doing it as a joined-up exercise.’
Simons’ job as chief cultural whip for London during that time was
as much about long-term strategy as it was about short-term fun and
delivery. When you host the Olympics, she explains, there are two“ T HAT YOUTH
DANCE
GROUP is THE
RE ASON
I’m DOING THIS
JOB TODAY ”