London 2012 (Re)calling: Youth memories and Olympic ‘legacy’ ether in the hinterland

Abstract

Engendering interest and support among young people was a key strategy for the organisers of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Part of the approach entailed promoting the event as a context and inspirational catalyst to propel young people’s proclivities toward, and enduring participation in, sport and physical activity. Although a variety of participatory platforms were entertained, the discipline of physical education remained a favoured space in which enduring Olympic imperatives could be amalgamated with government policy objectives. In this paper data are presented taken from the initial three years of a longitudinal study on young people’s engagement with the London 2012 Olympic Games, sport, physical activity and physical education within the UK’s West Midlands region. Memory scholarship is brought together with Olympic critiques, legacy debates, youth work and discussions about physical education to conceptualise participants’ anticipations and recollections of the London 2012 Olympic Games as a triptych of narrative fragments: each provides insights regarding youth experiences and the remnants of Olympic ether in the country’s hinterland. The paper offers a means subsequently to think differently about how we might play with the qualitative sociological/historiographical moments (experiences, voices, accounts, stories, etc.) that we capture in and through our work.

Keywords

London legacy memory Olympics West Midlands youth

In tandem with the construction of an elite performance sporting spectacle, the London 2012 Organising Committee for the Olympic Games’ (LOCOG) plans comprised distinct mass-participatory agendas to mobilise the United Kingdom’s citizenry through improved physical activity and sporting praxis (Bullough, 2012; Devine, 2013; Griffiths and Armour, 2013). LOCOG’s imperatives to ‘inspire a generation’ involved delivery strategies that focused on harnessing young people’s perceived proclivities for sport and physical activity, engendering nationalistic fervour for sports cultures, re-emphasising public health discourses and the reimaging of London and the UK as modern, vibrant, and vigorous sporting locales (Mahtani et al., 2013; Thornley, 2012; Weed et al., 2012). The London 2012 Olympic Games would, as far as LOCOG and the government proclaimed, propel an array of economic, infrastructural, environmental and social transformations (in and beyond London), not the least outcome of which would be a precipitation of discernible shifts in young people’s sporting engagement and participation in physical activity (Brown et al., 2012; Devine, 2013; Mackintosh et al., 2014). More than two years after the London 2012 Olympic Games, however, the legacy debate still lingers as scholars, businesses, media outlets, practitioners and members of the public attempt to hold the government and post-games delivery bodies accountable for (or at least mindful of) their Olympic promises (Devine, 2013; Giulianotti et al., 2014). In the domain of physical education and sport, for example, there has been multifarious discontent. Concerns have focused on the government’s seemingly cosy alliances with LOCOG; the haphazard approach to the conceptualisation, resourcing, implementation and monitoring of legacy policy; curricula shifts and pressures placed upon physical education as a delivery discipline; the explicit and latent effects on the discipline; and the insensitivities toward young people’s experiences and local contexts (Bloyce and Lovett, 2012; Bullough, 2012; Girginov, 2012; Girginov and Hills, 2008; Griffiths and Armour, 2013; Homma and Masumoto, 2013). Mindful of England now also hosting the impending Rugby Union World Cup in 2015, this sustained critical examination of the Olympic legacy with regard to the relationships between mega-sporting investments, youth sport, physical activity and physical education remains timely and profound.

To this end I craft a short series of narratives that cross three years of young people’s varied engagements (and/or disengagements) with the London 2012 Olympic Games, sport, physical activity and education. I add to Olympic legacy critiques by illuminating how a specific UK cohort of young people remember London 2012 with regard to their constantly evolving relationship to sport, physical activity and physical education. Akin to Kennelly and Watt’s (2011) research, I demonstrate that youth experiences of the Olympic Games in and beyond host cities are not always positive or inclusive and moreover that young people do not always engage with the Olympic Games to the same degree. The point here is not to measure the significance, or extent, of a legacy effect (if indeed such an effect exists); rather, it is to position young people’s experiences as a conversation with and about the Olympic Games, sport, physical activity and physical education writ large.

While as researchers we might occasionally desire cogent, deep, nuanced and rich participatory accounts from which to articulate fresh academic insights, this particular study comprises shorter recollections and reflections. As such, and departing from previous Olympic legacy research, I draw first on the theoretical conceptualisations of Halbwachs ([1950] 1980), Klein (2000), Ricoeur (2004, 2009) and Rumford (2011) to frame the disparate and messy empirical pieces as a form of memory making (which I present as fragments). The fragments comprise participant excerpts taken from an ongoing longitudinal study of the London 2012 Olympic legacy. The formation of these segments is not intended to establish a necessarily clear or neat and tidy interpretation of what the London 2012 Olympic Games might mean (or might have meant) to this group of young participants. Instead, the aim is to use the event as an experimental reference point around which young people’s critical ideas and voices might be orientated. I also locate the fragments within the broader scope of Olympic legacy debates and local geo-spatial and temporal context of the West Midlands.

On the construction of Olympic memory

A theoretical framework for the construction here of youth voices as a form of collective Olympic narrative can be developed from the work of several scholars, in particular, Anderson (1991), Bell (2003), Halbwachs ([1950] 1980), Klein (2000), Nathan (2003), and Ricoeur (2004, 2009). While not specifically attentive to sport (with the exception of Nathan), these scholars examine the historiographical processes of memory making, the ways sociologies of remembering are mobilised and the political utility of memory in public discourse. Combined, their investigations help open a conceptual space to bring together the empirical fragments of young people’s Olympic experiences and evaluate the fallibility of memory within the context of Olympic legacy (essentially, to question how London 2012 might be remembered, why, by whom, and, to what end). Drawing on memory scholarship allows us to move beyond merely conventional representations and interpretations of participatory voices in research into fresh territory in which such voices offer alternative hermeneutic possibilities: specifically here vis-á-vis making new Olympic-related micro-sociologies and critically orientated social histories of legacy experiences.

The early and revisited work of Halbwachs ([1950] 1980) provides a useful starting point for understanding the conceptualisation and politicisation of memory. Writing in the early half of the twentieth century (and largely responding to the consequences of geopolitical reconfigurations on history), Halbwachs underscored the utility of memory and remembering as heuristic devices, that is, as mechanisms by which the past might be understood and considered in relationship to unfolding contemporary contexts. The formation of divergent, yet collective, memories of experience were, for Halbwachs, central to processes of personal, civic, national and global identity formation. Essentially, what mattered was not the partiality and subjectivity of the collective memories but, rather, that they might be operationalised by people in future meaning making. Extending this line of argument, Ricoeur (2004, 2009) contends that examinations of the construction and use of shared memories are useful in revealing underlying power relations and political inequalities that govern human society. Ricoeur encourages us to consider fundamental questions of ‘what is the memory?’ and ‘whose memory is it?’. For Ricoeur, the coalescence of collective memory is essentially a social act entailing selective recollections, recreations, and reimaginings of the past for present purposes. Following this logic it is possible to assign legitimacy and authority to young people’s voices within recollections of London 2012 and, in tandem, appreciate the breadth, discord and disjuncture exhibited in their collective expressions. In this paper I draw together a collection of youth voices which I then frame as a unified (though not necessarily unifiable) arrangement of collective memory. The underlying aim is to offer a communal orchestration of remembering about the London 2012 Olympic Games and their alleged legacy.

Offering further credence to the utility of memory, Klein (2000) reminds us of the social research shift from conceiving memory as a theoretical anti-historical construct to it becoming a defining feature of progressive sociological and historical research practice. Memories, and in particular the reconstruction and examination of shared memories, provide devices through which scholars might come know, engage with and represent their communities of interest. As Bell (2003) and Nathan (2003) also add, the construction of memory matters because it offers a means by which individuals and communities are able to re-identify with each other, the spaces they inhabit and the experiences they are a part of. Whether critically-orientated reflection, ambivalent remembering or nostalgic recollection, memory is a powerfully seductive, highly charged and emotive process (Bell, 2003). As Nathan writes, ‘collective memory is a way of expressing sets of ideas, images, and feelings about the past that resonate among people who share a common orientation or allegiance’ (Nathan, 2003: 60). Such enterprises of memory-making should, Bell (2003) asserts, be cogniscant of historical and political tensions and contradictory forces (in the case of this paper, those presented by the IOC (International Olympic Committee), LOCOG and the government about totalising and positive effects of the Olympic Games and their legacy). As demonstrated shortly, the shared memories of London 2012 by young people are idiosyncratic, dramatic, affective, at times provocative and provide a form of counter-narrative and colourful retort to post-London 2012 discourse.

This paper is, then, a memory exercise in which personal anticipations and recollections clash, replicate, contradict, consolidate, challenge and crystallize with regard to the broader socio-cultural context and the political and ideological legacy ether. By framing participant voices conceptually as a collective memory project it is possible to construct a particular narrative of the London 2012 Olympic Games; in this case, a reminiscence that is a mélange of anticipation, excitement, joy, optimism and hope but, equally, of ambivalence, boredom, discontent, trepidation, anxiety and fear. The Olympic recollections crafted here are, to a degree, celebratory (in that they endorse public revelry for the event and its associated ethos). However, engendered within this effervescence are emotive personal responses that attend to a different set of truths (in which the Olympic Games are provocative, problematic and a divisive intrusion into young people’s lives). To recall the encouragement of Cubbit (2007), Raphael (1996) and Ricoeur (2009) to appreciate social memories as critical historical articulations, the utility of the evocations here is that this particular cohort of youth from the West Midlands is able to be the architects of a new Olympic remembering.

Further justification for moulding experiential reflections as a form of memory, and conversely privileging the roles memories play in narrative making, can be found in the domain of youth studies. To articulate better the lived experiences of young people, scholars have underlined the integral role that remembering the past plays in framing and reconstructing youth identities, belonging, social worth, community engagement and geo-political associations (e.g., Cohen, 1999; Dillabough and Kennelly, 2010; Gille and Ó Riain, 2002). This work has similarly drawn on theoretical approaches to memory (for example, Cubbit, 2007; Ricoeur, 2009) to underline how young people’s fragmentary personal accounts of the past offer useful means by which to explore power relations and political agency. The recent work of Dillabough and Kennelly (2010), Rumford (2011) and Wright and McLeod (2012), for instance, usefully demonstrates the ways in which reconfigurations of youth experiences, young people’s localised practices and understandings of ‘the everyday’ are framed (and normalised) around memory making processes. These sentiments are also echoed in the work of Cohen (1999), Dillabough and Kennelly (2010), Dillabough and Gardner (in press), and to a lesser extent McLeod (2012), in their various work examining disenfranchised youth in urban settings, and youth lives in the context of neo-liberal global economies.

My approach here is also influenced by those innovative scholars working across geography, youth studies, pedagogy and sport contexts who encourage new ways to negotiate, (re)present, and mobilise young peoples’ voices in qualitative research (for example, Hemming, 2007, 2008; Jones, 2008; Sedgwick, 2003; and others). Jones (2008) in particular calls for research approaches that transcend conventional ways of knowing and doing and move toward modalities that ‘…stress modesty, practice, experimentation, messiness, creativity and openness’ (Jones, 2008: 195). I also take inspiration from Powell and Marrero-Guillamón’s (2012) examinations of creative social activism enterprises oriented around London 2012 dissent. Mindful of my own subjectivities (including creative license), I attempt to capture and convey these sentiments with the memory fragments I craft below.

A synergy in the aforementioned research is in the attention afforded to young people’s consciousness about the past (especially with regard to consolidating their civic connections, emotions and identities). Essentially, in the practices of understanding their social worlds, the wider geo-political context, and their respective places therein, memory/historical reflection effectively serves as a spatial and temporal anchoring device shaping young people’s personal and collective ways of being (Dillabough and Kennelly, 2010; Gille and Ó Riain, 2002). Returning to Ricoeur (2009), memory not only constitutes a means of routinely accessing an individualised or communal past, but also is a necessary exercise of identity politics. Although youth recollections may be fleeting, contestable and highly subjective, such scholars highlight the value of investigating what young people remember and how threads of the past might be woven into young people’s conceptions of self and the spaces they inhabit. Ultimately, what such work underscores is the necessity of appreciating young people’s performances of the past as a form of critical historical and sociological discourse (Balibar, 2009). The assemblage here of young people’s anticipations and recollections of London 2012 is not merely a vestige of a whimsical sporting nostalgia (though some might rightly fall into this category). Rather, the fragments I reconstruct represent a nuanced, and on occasion fraught, entanglement with a shared past as part of an ongoing process of identity making.

(Physically) activating young people via Olympic legacy

Augmenting the theoretical conceptualisation, I turn now to an examination of sport and physical activity imperatives within the United Kingdom and corresponding London 2012 legacy ambitions. Since its modern inception in 1896, the Olympic Games have been strongly associated with notions of youth and youthfulness as part of celebrating sport’s allegedly universal appeal (Kidd, 2013). In more recent times, however, associations between young people and the Olympic movement in particular have been normalised as part of the IOC’s ideological and political strategies to attract and maintain investment in the movement and uphold its moral and social credibility and legitimacy (Carmichael et al., 2012; Girginov, 2012; Giulianotti et al., 2014; IOC, 2013; Kennelly and Watt, 2011). For the IOC, youth engagement with the Olympic movement forms part of the philosophy that underpins the organisation (IOC, 2013; Kidd, 2013). Subsequently, in order to win IOC approval candidate cities (which may or may not become host cities) often attempt to incorporate elements of this ethos within their games proposals (Brown et al., 2012; Homma and Masumoto, 2013). London’s 2012 Olympic bid, for example, was successful not only because it leveraged the city’s multicultural demographic, but also because it capitalised more broadly on empowering urban youth through promoting increased participation in sport and physical activity (Brown et al., 2012; Bullough, 2012; Weed et al., 2012).

Prior to the awarding of the Olympic games to London in 2005, protagonists – led by ex-athlete and politician, Lord (Sebastian) Coe – formulated a campaign based on using the mega-event to ‘inspire a generation’ (not only in London but also throughout the United Kingdom) (Bloyce and Lovett, 2012; Carmichael et al., 2012; Girginov, 2012). The approach positioned the Olympic Games as a mechanism for sporting transformation, strategically aligned with broader social reforms and policy debates on sport and physical activity (Devine, 2013). Key moments over the course of the decade before 2012 included the development of documents such as Game Plan (Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), 2002), and investment in meta-data projects such as Sport England’s Active People Survey (Carmichael et al., 2012; Sport England, 2014; Weed et al., 2012). LOCOG also linked the Olympic Games with overarching issues and concerns, namely, associations between mass participation and public attitudes to health and physical activity, young people’s (physical) educational motivations, and the nation’s emotive engagement with sport and physical activity (Bloyce and Smith, 2012; Karadakis and Kaplanidou, 2012).

While seemingly laudable, the approach sat uneasily with physical educators who were discomforted with the politicisation of their discipline to fulfil Olympic purposes and government imperatives (Armour and Dagkas, 2012; Carmichael et al., 2012; Griffiths and Armour, 2013). Although natural synergies may have existed between the Olympic Games and physical education, the seemingly harmonious association was, in my view, rightly criticised (Bloyce and Smith, 2012; Griffiths and Armour, 2013; Grix and Carmichael, 2012). With regard to the London 2012 Olympic Games, scholars remonstrated that although the event might present some opportunities to inspire and/or improve sport participation, ultimately legacy agendas have compounded physical educators’ work. Moreover, the discipline and its constituents have been placed under considerable pressure to increase participation, engagement and performance and provide meaningful experiences that resonate into long-term attitudinal and behavioural shifts beyond the classroom (Armour and Dagkas, 2012; Chatziefstathiou, 2012; Griffiths and Armour, 2013).

A clear disconnect emerges between official Olympic legacy imperatives, sensitive and sensible educational curriculum and policy development, disciplinary praxis and practitioners’ ontological discomforts (for further discussion of this see Hsu and Kohe, 2014; Kohe, 2010; Kohe and Bowen-Jones, 2015). Scholars have gone even further in examining Olympic legacy consequences for young people (within and beyond the context of sport and physical activity engagement) (e.g., Kennelly and Watt, 2011; Mackintosh et al., 2014; Wright et al., 2003). The work of Wright et al. (2003), for instance, stresses that youth perspectives and experiences matter in Olympic legacy dialogues (particularly if such dialogues are attempting to demonstrate disjuncture, disenfranchisement and discord with government agendas, public policy, social inequalities, and global or local market forces). This position is furthered by Mackintosh et al. (2014) similar assessments of youth attitudes, behaviours, experiences and understandings of the Olympic Games. As Kennelly and Watt (2011) stress with regard to their comparative work on the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games and London 2012 Olympic Games, while the IOC and local organizing committees have strategically targeted youth populations (often in deprived areas) as a means of engendering public support and corporate engagement, young people’s experiences remain largely absent in policy planning and implementation and post-Olympic discussions. Illuminating young people’s perspectives is useful because it not only offers insights into memory and identity but also reveals a series of shared (and highly variable) truths young people hold (if only temporarily so) about the legitimacy of the Olympic games and the consequences for their experiences of sport, physical activity and physical education. Maintaining criticism of the Olympic Games and its consequences also makes considerable sense given the prevailing and heightened sense of moral ‘crisis’/ ‘panic’ by which youth appear to be constantly confronted in contemporary society (Fusco, 2007; McLeod, 2009; Pike, 2007). In the following section I provide brief details of the localised context as a narrative backdrop.

The setting for memory making

The cohort for this study come from a secondary school located within a medium-sized metropolitan city (approximately 316,000 inhabitants) in England’s West Midlands region (approximately 113 miles (182 km) from London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park) (Office for National Statistics (ONS), 2012). The school is a mixed gender (approximately 50/50%), comprehensive (its intake includes students aged 11–18), inner-city establishment with some 1507 students. While the school performs consistently well with regard to national examination levels (GCSE or equivalent) (60% pass rates in 2013), in comparison to other schools in the Local Authority concerned, and against the national average, there has been a marked decline in results from 2012–2013 (Department for Education (DE), 2014). The school has consistently been rated (since 2007/2008) as ‘Outstanding’ (the highest performance indicator bestowed on educational establishments by OFSTED, the standards authority) and has established a strong reputation as a bespoke business and enterprise provider and recognised leadership specialist (DE, 2014). All of the above points strongly to a school well-placed to provide positive, engaging and, hopefully, enduringly memorable learning experiences.

In spite of providing (on paper at least) an exceptional environment, the school and others within the city have, following the arrival in 2010 of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government and resultant local authority pressures, faced challenges that have changed the educational landscape. There have been reductions in resources (e.g. funding streams and teacher/support provision), an increase in schools’ autonomy (particular in terms of curriculum development, scope and implementation), raised accountability measures and changed support arrangements (Bhattacharya, 2013; Greany and Allen, 2014). Such adversities have also been compounded by the city’s particular community demographics of above-average levels of deprivation, higher than average levels of inhabitants with English as a second language and questionable levels of social service provision for young people. Against this picture, young people’s educational experiences (including in sport and physical education) have come under increased scrutiny. In response to some of these concerns, the local authority, in conjunction with schools, companies, charities and volunteer organisations, has recently embarked on a longer term strategy to improve the conditions for sport and physical activity at all levels and raise its national and regional profile as a ‘sporting city’ (Coventry City Council, 2014; Evans, 2012; Sport England, 2014).

A key catalyst of this civic rejuvenation process was the opportunity afforded to the city to serve as one of the six official partner-city hosts of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Subsequently, in the lead up to and during the event, the city’s Olympic immersion was extensive. For example, the city entertained the Olympic flame overnight during the 70-day torch relay, acted as one of the 22 official (big screen) ‘Live’ sites set up across the country, hosted events as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, provided ambassadors and volunteers to support the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London, supported local/regional Olympic athletes, provided training camps for visiting Olympic teams, and fostered Olympic-inspired education and community initiatives. From 25 July to 9 August 2012 the city hosted 12 Olympic football matches (including one bronze medal award). Some of the city’s schools (including the example in this paper) also subscribed to LOCOG’s official ‘Get Set’ school programme. Aligning with the Olympic movement’s educational imperatives and government policy agendas, the initiative primarily involved schools subscribing to obtain access to Olympic education resources. Participating establishments also acquired public recognition as a ‘Get Set’ school and were rewarded – for example with vouchers and prizes from the Games’ corporate sponsors, visits from Olympic athletes, resource packs, and selection as a host/training camp for visiting national Olympic delegations – for their efforts to promote London 2012 and the values of the Olympic movement (http://www.getset.co.uk/home; Chatziefstathiou, 2012). Altogether, and not unlike other UK destinations, the extent of Olympic effervescence that came to envelop the city (or, more cynically, the stench of Olympic effluent (my provocative, personal sentiment admittedly) though evidently grounded within wider London 2012 Olympic discontent, e.g., Powell and Marrero-Guillamón, 2012) was profound and pervasive.

Capturing the memories

The data herein derive from a longitudinal project that began during the 2011–2012 school year involving a particular Year Seven cohort (initially comprising 174 11–12 year-olds) in one school located in the West Midlands region of the UK. The approach was informed by ongoing investigations of young peoples’ participation in physical activity and sport and perspectives of the Olympic Games (for example, Cotton, 2012 Rikard and Banville, 2006; Tannehill et al., 2013). Drawing on the predominant themes of this research, and also broader sport/educational legacy and Olympic critiques, a 14-item questionnaire was developed to ascertain participant’s attitudes and behaviours regarding physical activity, sport and physical education, experiences and feelings (if any) pertaining to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Questions were also asked about engagements with school or community Olympic events, knowledge of Olympic athletes, visits to the Olympic park in London, acquisition of tickets, Olympic-related inspiration levels, and proclivities to increase participation in sport and physical activity. A pilot study with similarly aged students was used to improve the quality of the questionnaire and refine its syntax.

As with previous examinations of young peoples’ perspectives of physical education, physical activity, health and biocitizenry (e.g., Petherick, 2013; Rich, 2011; Rikard and Banville, 2006; Tannehill et al., 2013), the questionnaire asked students to document their engagement with sport and physical activity. Across the three years of the longitudinal research students were asked to detail their anticipations about the Olympic games (in the pre-event phase) and were prompted to reflect upon the memories at two particular post-games junctures. Students were asked to score their responses using a Likert-type scale for the initial section of the post-games questionnaire, and also to describe their general memories of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In a similar manner, students were then asked to detail both their sport-specific and athlete-specific memories of the event. Similar questions were also asked with regard to the corresponding London 2012 Paralympic Games. Subsequently, students were prompted to consider any correlations they felt existed between their levels of post-games inspiration and watching the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Part of this section also asked students, variously: whether they felt inspired to take up new sports or physical activity as a result of watching the event; if the Olympic/Paralympic games had changed their attitudes toward physical education; whether teachers continued to discuss the Olympic games or introduced any new sports or physical activities in the classroom; or whether students knew of the (then) impending 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

The approach was intended to capture a series of discrete and discreet, individualised, concise, evocative moments that might otherwise have remained entrapped within a participant’s personal Olympic/sporting imaginaries. The objective was to assess whether, and the varying degrees to which, the 2012 Olympic Games may or may not continue to resonate with young people outside of London. In what follows I present three fragments (each corresponding to a separate (re)collection year). Representing a proportion of responses from the first three years of the project, each fragment comprises a series of thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and remarks pertaining generally to the areas of sport, physical activity, physical education and the Olympic Games. I then analyse these under the respective titles ‘Active anticipations’ (circa pre-London 2012), ‘(A)musing moments’ (circa 2013) and Arrested recollection’ (circa 2014). The fragments present readers with a form of post-Olympic narrative – a recourse to London 2012 that is not necessarily seamless, complete or always comprehensible, but, rather, (and returning to Ricoeur’s (2004, 2009) remarks about memory making) messy, fluid, contradictory, dynamic, changeable and fleeting. To emphasise further the breaking and remaking of Olympic memories, the specific fragment shapes have been influenced by the individual elements of the ‘2012’ segment of the iconic London Olympic/Paralympic Games brand logo. As a conscious design choice, the fragment borders, too, subtly dissipate as an aesthetic reflection and comment on the diminishing ether of memory.

The methodological intention was to gauge/gather, as best as possible over a small longitudinal study, continuities and discontinuities in young peoples’ memories with regards to sport, physical activity, physical education and the Olympic/Paralympic games. Although there was a preliminary interest in critiquing the notion of legacy effects, capturing the affective dimension of young’ peoples (thoughts, values, ideas and opinions) through the conceptual lens of memory making provided a useful means of understanding young people’s lives and voices in transition. As the fragments below highlight, from pre- to post-London 2012 Olympics, for example, students’ memories shifted with regard to personal affectations for sport, physical activity and physical education; collective and individualised feelings orientated around notions of place, community and engagement within the mega sporting event; and broader interpretations of the prevailing political, economic and environmental milieu.

Fragment I

This fragment (Figure 1) captures (in part) the emotive vigour young participants expressed in the lead up to the London 2012 Olympic Games. Here, feelings of fear, elation, enjoyment and anticipation are juxtaposed with a repeated sense of antipathy, ambivalence and annoyance. Participants’ fervent passions for sport and the Olympic Games coexist with feelings of frustration and boredom. Beyond, this collective memory collage also meshes deeply personal resonances (for example, about love, determination and enjoyment) with broader social, political, geographic and cultural reference points –for example, Britain and nationalistic fervour, (physical) educational experiences, friends and family relationships, and, media and advertising processes. Each component can be read and interpreted separately. However, when collated the effect is the creation of a multi-layered and, invariably, more complex memory, that is, a recollection narrative that is nuanced, non-linear, discursive and disruptive. To recall Halbwachs ([1950] 1980) and Ricoeur (2004, 2009), the fragment is substantive not merely because it acts as a site upon which individualised experiences of the past might be laid but, rather, because it provides a mechanism for the formation of a memory commons. Under such logic, the fragment is a space in which personal, public/civic, national, global and idealistic remembering can represent collective identity enterprise: in this case, the beginning panel of a triptych on young people’s London Olympic imaginings.

Figure 1.

Fragment I: active anticipations.

The second fragment (Figure 2.) comprises another array of emotive participant responses. Here, however, young people’s recollections are quite closely anchored to distinct temporal and spatial points of reference (e.g., specific events and/or sports, opening and closing ceremonies and athletic achievement). Again, discourses of boredom and ambivalence, as well as amazement, inspiration and enjoyment, permeate from the past. Synergistically with pre-event anticipations, distinct associations between the Olympic Games and participants’ identities, lives and bodies were also pervasive. Alongside these thoughts there are also sentimental connections to the nation and a general ethos of inspiration. Notwithstanding the prevalence of positive ponderings, elements of criticism are also evident (for example, with regard to wasteful expense, ‘random’ ‘weird’ ceremonies, and the idiocy of spectating sweaty bodies). Taken in totality (whilst admittedly existing still in partiality), the (re)configuration provides a small insight into some of the diverse interactions and meanings youth draw from their lives and shared experiences. In this case, and to recall the remarks of Dillabough and Kennelly (2010), Gille and Ó Riain (2002) and Rumford (2011) on the significance of memory processes in the interpretation of youth lives, the London 2012 Olympic Games serve here as a focal point around which young people can orientate their identities, corporeal practices (namely physical education and activity) and notions of the ‘everyday’. The fragment crystalizes young people’s localised historicisation (effectively, their remaking of a time and space that is represented here as emotive, provocative and potentially disruptive). In addition, the unifiable (though not necessarily unified) memory etched onto this fragment also reasserts Kennelly and Watt’s (2011) destabilising of the axiom that the Olympics, writ large, will be a positive (and enduring) experience for all young people. The collective voice of participants here certainly speaks to a darker counter-narrative in which anxiety, indifference, frustration, vehemence and Olympic fatigue may play more pronounced roles.

Figure 2.

Fragment II: (a)musing moments

Fragment III

Not unlike Fragments I and II, the last fragment (Figure 3) exhibits similarly eclectic perspectives. There is continuation of the positive celebrations of the country and its athletes (for example, Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis), joy over nationalistic symbolism, clear ceremonial impressions and appreciation of the triumphs of global sport superstars (e.g. Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt). As before, some participants rehearsed memories of what they had seen (either in person or via television) and the sports that captured their interest. Others demonstrated their disinterest and disgust. Strong, curt and expressive sentiments still maintained a presence. While feelings of inspiration loomed for some in the post-Olympic context, for others the spectacle seems to have begun slipping from cognition. Irrespective of some of their proclivities for sport and physical activity, students have either a lack of knowledge about or an inability to recall opportunities for the provision of physical activity at school or in the local community. Few students, for example, were aware of changes to physical education at the school (although it must be noted that in the post-games phase, and notwithstanding marginally increased government support for the subject, the changes were marginal at this particular school).

Figure 3.

Fragment III: arrested recollection

Returning to earlier comments about the national and local context for physical education and the Olympic legacy, the reminiscences are also political (namely, in highlighting young people’s concerns about their (physical) educational experiences, curricula foci and the provision of school and community resources). In this fragment participants appear to be more explicit with regards to the process of remembering (and forgetting). As such, the distance being created between the realities of the London 2012 Olympic Games as the past, and its contemporary rending as a historical creation within a set of personal and social imaginings, can be more clearly seen. To return to Bell (2003) and Klein’s (2000) perspectives, collective memory formations operate as mechanisms of social consolidation, in this case, the coalescences of shared experiences around points of commonality (e.g. the Olympic Games legacy and physical education).

Mobilising the memories

The tri-fold fragments presented above creatively orchestrate a brief, yet nuanced, narrative of the London 2012 Olympic Games. I used qualitative data (specifically, participants’ responses to descriptive questionnaire) accordant with aforementioned studies of youth Olympic engagement (e.g. Kennelly and Watt, 2010; Mackintosh et al., 2014; Rikard and Banville, 2006; Tannehill et al., 2013) to craft narrative ‘fragments’ (unbounded by thematic constraint). The forms I created were a playful, pictorial exercise to demonstrate the messiness of memory making. The intention was to construct youth recollections as fragmented entities, in essence, to show their collective experiences of the London 2012 Olympic Games not as always linear or lucid but, rather, as disrupted (and corruptible), mobile and moveable, freeform, multidirectional, diminishing, re-emergent, sensitive and dynamic. As Bell (2003), Ricoeur (2004) and others argue, all of these qualities (particularly the acceptance of partiality, subjectivity and whimsicality) have a place and role in memory making, and give credence to its politicization and social and historical utilities. Such arguments encourage the type of Olympic memories entertained here. Notwithstanding their evident futilities, I contend that, taken together, the fragments do comprise a useful memory triad which reveals something about young people’s lives, specifically, in this case, thoughts about sport, physical education and the Olympic Games. Moreover, the memory composition also provides a counter narrative to earlier disciplinary work and policy agendas that promoted inherently natural and normalised positive relationships between young people, their bodies and sport/physical activity (to trace these historical developments see Britton, 1972; Carroll, 1974; Evans, 1990; Green, 2002; Houlihan and Green, 2006).

Beyond playful enterprise, once the memory has been arrested though, how might it be mobilised? Beyond these fragments, and echoing Halbwachs ([1950] 1980) and Ricoeur (2004, 2009), it is timely to consider here how collective memory might be accounted for in the present and contribute to historically informing future trajectories. In what ways, for example, might the fragments serve discussions on Olympic legacy, educational debates and increasing political, social and moral concerns about young people and their plight? To recall, accounting for young people’s presence(s) and improving their lives and experiences via sport was an integral component in LOCOG’s delivery rhetoric (Bullough, 2012; Chatziefstathiou, 2012). Alignment with government education and health-based policies in the sector also added gravitas to LOCOG’s messages and popular discourse regarding the transformative, all-encompassing, potentialities of the mega-event spectacle (Devine, 2013). While attention was directed to the temporal and spatial context of East London and its young inhabitants, the Games ether invariably filtered outward toward many citizens in the nation’s hinterlands. In general, the findings provide evidence of young peoples’ highly individualised and nuanced engagement with the Olympic and Paralympic Games, discord with informal and formal physical activity and educational experiences, and difficulty in consolidating associations between mega events and attitudinal and behavioural shifts toward increased sport and physical education. Collectively the fragments also demonstrate the effective use of memory in anchoring young people’s (dis)associations to alleged notions of a collective (nationalising/community orientated) sporting past. Young people do demonstrate, at least here, a range of broad subjectivities regarding their collective and personal Olympic experiences, attitudes to physical activity and sport, wider socio-cultural and political concerns, and local production of contextual knowledge.

For young people in the West Midlands (the specific cohort in this study, at least), the Olympic Games served as a particular reference point in shaping, variously, their personal belief systems, localised social experiences, historical and symbolic understandings about belonging, dis/appreciations for sport and physical education, and collective formations of identity. The London 2012 Olympic Games mattered not necessarily as a means of engendering community spirit and increasing young people’s physical activity and sporting participation (though this may have occurred) but, rather, because the event provided a moment in which to examine the lives of youth and their engagement with the world. While the London 2012 Olympic Games may have finished, the event (as a memory, concept, idea and reflection point) still resonates (to varying degrees) in the recesses of individual participant’s minds. As such, their perspectives (and consumptions) of the Olympic Games should still matter. The Olympic spectacle is not ‘long-over’: it can be retrieved, reconstituted and represented (through various processes such as those used experimentally in this study) as part of an ongoing and, I would argue, important legacy dialogue.

The value of interjecting the voices of youth into legacy dialogue can be seen when participants’ memories are extrapolated from the fragments and juxtaposed with media messages and official government and LOCOG rhetoric. For example, remarks by Prime Minister David Cameron that,

The whole country can benefit from the legacy of the Games because of the inspiration they will bring to people young and old. (Anon, Daily Telegraph, 09 January 2012)

Or comments by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson:

We proved the Olympo-sceptics in error when they declared that London couldn’t lay on a world-class Games. We are now set to defy the doom-mongers when it comes to securing a permanent legacy. (The Guardian, 18 July 2013)

These appear to coalesce, to a degree, with participants’ positive recollections:

I feel very joyful and excited because a lot of people would see how it feels to live in East London and I support Mo Farah.

I feel proud that they are in Britain.

However, such comments jar when configured against perpetual media headlines tracing Olympic legacy tension:

Olympic legacy fails to boost sports participation in Newham. (Amako, 2013)

[The] Olympic legacy cannot be taken for granted. (Roan, 2013)

Drop prompts accusations that the Government has already squandered the legacy of London 2012. (Scott-Elliot, 2013)

Additional (written) remarks by participants offer further discontent:

It’s good but not that interesting.

I am not that excited because everything is harder and harder in life. E.g if the Olympics come there will be traffic jams, money problems.

I won’t have a chance to go and the streets will be crowded with tourists.

Hatrid, despair, murderous.

Statements such as, ‘I don’t really get excited because I dont like sport of PE’ (sic), may be positioned in contradistinction to Lord Coe’s apologetic remarks to help question the conceptual and pragmatic fallibility of the Olympic legacy, and assumptions about the synergies between the mega-sport event, physical education/physical activity and young people’s lives, desires and experiences.

I’m sorry school sport became tribal, that’s probably the only thing we didn’t deliver in the same spirit as everything else was delivered. (Gibson, The Guardian, 18 July 2013)

The argument here is that a recourse to (and validation of) memory can be useful in understanding young people’s lives and experiences, revealing their desires and concerns and providing a platform upon which a more wide-ranging case for addressing equality and equity, justice, enfranchisement and social transformation might be made. The utility of this sort of memory making lies in the ability to uniquely intertwine and consolidate distinctly personal remnants of experience, collective unities and disparities (e.g. regarding relationships between perceived Olympic games inspiration and physical education) and intersections with the perceived broader influences (e.g. economics, housing, traffic, terrorism) on young peoples’ lived experiences. Such memories, as displayed in the range of ambivalent and negative attitudes expressed, also speak to a gradual decentring and diminishing value of physical practices (to a degree) in the lives of some of these young participants. In this case, memories of the London 2012 Olympic Games crystallise a series of deeper concerns about the context, discourses and idiosyncrasies countering this particular (young) cohort’s sporting and educational worlds. Such an approach is already supported by scholars who have argued for the protagonist role memory serves in advancing youth causes (Cohen, 1999; Kennelly and Watt, 2011; McLeod, 2009, 2012). Scholars argue that collective memories hold value because the memories provide deeply personalised, yet shared, insights shaped and anchored in the temporal and spatial realities of everyday life. Moreover, collective recollections can also demonstrate, in sharp relief, the disparate polarities and hierarchies of urban environments and the politically layered fabric of communities therein. Thus the fragments in this paper are useful not only for exhibiting how London 2012 was embodied among West-Midlands youth, but also for disrupting illusions of unification and togetherness that were central to the ethos of Games’ organisers and political stakeholders.

While the memories present the views of one particular cohort, they assume a particularly saliency when politicised within the framework of overarching debates about global and local ‘healthism’ and productive citizenship, community engagement, neoliberal curriculum changes, and sustained concern about young peoples’ lives, morality and well-being (e.g., Burrows, 2011; Mansfield and Rich, 2013; Rich, 2011; Wright and Halse, 2014). Essentially, this accumulation of scholarship on biopower, biopedagogy and health discourse writ large both within and beyond the UK context seeks to account better for the (re)construction of the subject (e.g. young people) within and beyond the prevailing and predominant regimes of construction of truth and knowledge (as manifested, in this case, through health, wellbeing, pedagogical, sport or physical activity rhetoric, policy and ideology) (Mansfield and Rich, 2013; Petherick, 2013; Rich, 2011; Wright, 2009; Wright and Halse, 2014). The ‘memory fragments’ I constructed serve this cause by articulating and mobilising aspects of young peoples’ voices, the eclectic and disparate nature of their positions, and the current complexities of governmental and disciplinary shifts that privilege unified and unifiable approaches to promoting and adopting physical activity participation and health imperatives within physical education settings (see Mansfield and Rich, 2013; Petherick, 2013; Rich, 2013; Wright, 2009). This paper sustains these peers’ calls for disciplinary scrutiny, social justice and equality.

Conclusion

At a time when multifarious global (and local) circumstances appear to have rendered youth ever more vulnerable, at-risk, in danger, in need, lost, and/or, fraught with moral ‘crisis(es)’ (Dillabough and Kennelly, 2010; Fusco, 2007; Wright and Mcleod, 2012), attentiveness to the utility of memory may offer some pause for thought. Against the prevailing neo-liberal context in which young people etch out their lives, processes of memory are integral to identity construction and the formation of social narratives that bind – in reality or perception – individuals, groups, communities and societies to each other and their particular contexts (Anderson, 1991; Bell, 2003; Halbwachs [1950] 1980). In this case, that setting was a particular city in the West Midlands region of the UK and involved a cohort of young people whose lives, and correspondent associations to place and space, were partially orientated by a mega-event sporting spectacle. Irrespective of whatever opportunities the London 2012 Olympic Games afforded, it is evident from the fragments that reflections since the event took place have remained fairly colourful and continue to inform experiences of sport and physical education (for better or for worse). The fragments are also helpful in destabilising notions that sport/physical education might hold a treasured, privileged or necessarily important place in young people’s hearts and minds.

At the time of writing, two and a half years on from London 2012, doubt lingers over the consequences of the spectacle, not least of all with regard to its effect on young people and their the (physical) educational experiences. Taken in consideration with the altered landscapes of education in the UK and resultant pressures on the discipline of physical education, mentioned earlier, the experiences represented here may hold some political value (certainly in terms of informing sport policy and physical education curricula, and youth welfare debates). Simply put, and notwithstanding the emergent corpus of work, ongoing legacy work still needs to account better for the presence of youth amongst other (dis)affected and (dis)enchanted groups. A return to memory may hold promise in that regard and might inform better our work with young people and the debates to which we are a part.

Footnotes

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References

Amako

(2013) Olympic legacy fails to boost sports participation in Newham. Newham Recorder, 13 December 2013. Available at: http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/olympic_legacy_fails_to_boost_sports_participation_in_newham_1_3110283

Anderson

(1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd ed. London: Verso.

Anon (2012) David Cameron: The Olympics will leave a great legacy. The Daily Telegraph, 9 January. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9002577/David-Cameron-London-2012-Olympics-will-leave-a-great-legacy.html (accessed 12 April 2012).

Armour

Dagkas

(2012) ‘Olympism’ and education: A critical review. Educational Review 64(3): 261–264.

Balibar

(2009) We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Bell

(2003) Mythscapes: Memory, mythology, and national identity. British Journal of Sociology 54(1): 63–81.

Bhattacharya

(2013) Academy schools in England. Childhood Education 89(2): 94–98.

Bloyce

Lovett

(2012) Planning for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic legacy: A figurational analysis. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 4(3): 361–377.

Bloyce

Smith

(2012) The ‘Olympic and Paralympic effect’ on public policy: Use and misuse. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 4(3): 301–305.

10.

Britton

(1972) The struggle for recognition. British Journal of Physical Education 3(3): 34.

11.

Brown

Cox

Owens

(2012) Bid, delivery, legacy – Creating the governance architecture of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games legacy. Australian Planner 49(3): 226–238.

12.

Bullough

(2012) A new look at the latent demand for sport and its potential to deliver a positive legacy for London 2012. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 4(1): 39–54.

13.

Burrows

(2011) “‘I’m Proud to Be Me’: Health, community and schooling. Policy Futures in Education 9(3): 341–352.

14.

Carmichael

Grix

Marques

(2012) The Olympic legacy and participation in sport: An interim assessment of Sport England’s Active People Survey for sport studies research. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 5(2): 229–244.

15.

Carroll

(1974) A rational curriculum plan for PE. British Journal of Physical Education 5(6): 103.

16.

Chatziefstathiou

(2012) Olympic education and beyond: Olympism and value legacies from the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Educational Review 64(3): 385–400.

17.

Cohen

(1999) Rethinking the Youth Question: Education, Labour and Cultural Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

18.

Cotton

(2012) Inspiring a generation? Young people’s views on the Olympic Games’legacy? British Journal of School Nursing 7(6): 296–301.

19.

Coventry City Council (2014) Our journey: How Coventry celebrated London 2012. Available at: http://london2012.cswp.org.uk/london-2012-team-gb-hopefuls (accessed 15 June 2014).

20.

Cubbit

(2007) History and Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

21.

Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) (2002) Game Plan. London: DCMS.

22.

Department for Education (2014) School performance tables. Available at: http://www.education.gov.uk/inyourarea/results/pcon_B21_wards_2.shtml (accessed 15 June 2014).

23.

Devine

(2013) London 2012 Olympic legacy: A big sporting society? International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 5(2): 257–259.

24.

Dillabough

J-A

Gardner

(2015) ‘Of Time and the City’: Young people’s ethnographic accounts of identity and urban experience in Canada. In: Smeyers

Bridges

Burbules

Griffiths

(eds) International Handbook in Interpretation of Education Research. Berlin: Springer, pp. 727–752.

25.

Dillabough

J-A

Kennelly

(2010) Lost Youth in the Global City. London: Taylor & Francis.

26.

Evans

(1990) Defining a subject: The rise and rise of the new PE? British Journal of Sociology of Education 11(2): 155–169.

27.

Evans

(2013) Local authority report. Available at: http://covsport.org.uk/media/downloads/coventry-sports-and-leisure-report (accessed 15 June 2014).

28.

Fusco

(2007) ‘Healthification’ and the promises of urban space: A textual analysis of place, activity, youth (PLAY-ing) in the city. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42(1): 43–63.

29.

Gibson

(2013) Lord Coe: I’m quitting to make sure Olympic legacy is delivered. The Guardian, 19 July. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/jul/19/lord-coe-quits-ambassador-olympic-legacy

30.

Gille

Ó Riain

(2002) Global ethnography. Annual Review of Sociology 28: 271–295.

31.

Girginov

(2012) Governance of London 2012 Olympic Games legacy. International Review of the Sociology of Sport 47(5): 543–588.

32.

Girginov

Hills

(2008) A sustainable sports legacy: Creating a link between the LondonOlympics and sports participation. The International Journal of the History of Sport 25(14): 2091–2116.

33.

Giulianotti

Armstrong

Hales

. (2014) Sport mega-events and public opposition: A sociological study of the London 2012 Olympics. Journal of Sport & Social Issues. Epub ahead of print 14 April. DOI: 10.1177/0193723514530565.

34.

Greany

Allen

(2014) School Improvement Networks and System Leadership in Coventry: Evaluating Progress, Areas for Development and Possible Next Steps. London: London Centre for Leadership in Learning.

35.

Green

(2002) Physical education teachers in their figurations: A sociological analysis of everyday philosophies. Sport, Education and Society 7(1): 65–83.

36.

Griffiths

Armour

(2013) Physical education and youth sport in England: Conceptual and practical foundations for an Olympic legacy? International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 5(2): 213–227.

37.

Grix

Carmichael

(2012) Why do governments invest in elite sport? A polemic. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 4(1): 73–90.

38.

Halbwachs

([1950] 1980) The Collective Memory. New York: Harper & Row.

39.

Hemming

(2007) Renegotiating the primary school: Children’s emotional geographies of sport, exercise and active play. Children’s Geographies 5(4): 353–371.

40.

Hemming

(2008) Mixing qualitative research methods in children’s geographies. Area 40(2): 152–162.

41.

Homma

Masumoto

(2013) A theoretical approach for the Olympic legacy study focusing on sustainable sport legacy. The International Journal of the History of Sport 30(12): 1455–1471.

42.

Houlihan

Green

(2006) The changing status of school sport and physical education: Explaining policy change. Sport, Education and Society 11(1): 73–92.

43.

Hsu

Kohe

(2014) Aligning Olympic education with the Liberal Arts: A curriculum blueprint from Taiwan. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy. Epub ahead of print 6 February 2014. DOI: 10.1080/17408989.2014.882892.

44.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) (2013) Olympic Charter. Lausanne: IOC.

45.

Jones

(2008) True geography [ ] quickly forgotten, giving away to an adult imagined universe. Approaching the otherness of childhood. Children’s Geographies 6(2): 195–212.

46.

Karadakis

Kaplanidou

(2012) Legacy perceptions among host and non-host Olympic Games residents: A longitudinal study of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. European Sport Management Quarterly 12(3): 243–264.

47.

Kennelly

Watt

(2011) Sanitizing Public Space in Olympic Host Cities: The Spatial experiences of marginalized youth in 2010 Vancouver and 2012 London. Sociology 45(5): 765–781.

48.

Kidd

(2013) The global sporting legacy of the Olympic movement. Sport in Society 16(4): 491–502.

49.

Klein

(2000) On the emergence of memory in historical discourse. Representations 69: 127–150.

50.

Kohe

(2010) Disrupting the birds’ nest: ‘Show Case China – Beijing 2008’ and socio-historical challenges for Olympic education. Sport, Education and Society 15(4): 479–494.

51.

Kohe

Bowen-Jones

(2015) Rhetoric and realities of London 2012 Olympic education and participation ‘legacies’: Voices from the core and periphery. Sport, Education and Society. Epub ahead of print 6 January 2015. DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2014.997693.

52.

Mackintosh

Darko

Rutherford

. (2014) A qualitative study of the impact of the London 2012 Olympic on families in the East Midlands of England: Lessons for sport development. Sport, Education and Society. Epub ahead of print 10 February 2014. DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2014.881337.

53.

McLeod

(2009) Youth studies, comparative inquiry and the local/global problematic. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies 31(4): 1–23.

54.

McLeod

(2012) Vulnerability and the neo-liberal youth citizen: A view from Australia. Comparative Education 48(1): 11–26.

55.

Mahtani

Protheroe

Slight

. (2013) Can the London 2012 Olympics ‘inspire a generation’ to do more physical or sporting activities? An overview of systematic review. British Medical Journal Open 3(1): 1–9.

56.

Mansfield

Rich

(2013) Public health pedagogy, border crossings and physical activity at every size. Critical Public Health 23(3): 356–370.

57.

Nathan

(2003) Saying It’s So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

58.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2012) 2011 Census: Key statistics for local authorities England and Wales. Available at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/key-statistics-for-local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/stb-2011-census-key-statistics-for-england-and-wales.html (accessed 21 August 2014).

59.

Petherick

(2013) Producing the young biocitizen: Secondary school students’ negotiation of learning in physical education. Sport, Education and Society 18(6): 711–730.

60.

Pike

(2007) Revisiting the ‘Physical Activity, Sexual Health, Teenage Identity Construction Nexus’. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42(3): 309–319.

61.

Powell

Marrero-Guillamón

(eds) (2012) The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State. London: Marshgate Press.

62.

Raphael

(1996) Theatres of Memory. London: Verso.

63.

Rich

(2011) Exploring the relationship between pedagogy and physical cultural studies: The case of new health imperatives in Schools. Sociology of Sport Journal 28(1): 64–84.

64.

Ricoeur

(2004) Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

65.

Ricoeur

(2009) Living Up to Death. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

66.

Rikard

Banville

(2006) High school student attitudes about physical education. Sport, Education and Society 11(4): 385–400.

67.

Roan

(2013) School sport: Olympic legacy cannot be taken for granted. BBC Sport, 17 May.

68.

Rumford

(2011) Citizens and Borderwork in Contemporary Europe. London: Routledge.

69.

Scott-Elliot

(2013) Drop prompts accusations that the Government has already squandered the legacy of London 2012. The Independent, 14 June. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/significantly-fewer-people-now-playing-sport-regularly-than-before-last-years-olympic-games-8658107.html

70.

Sedgwick

(2003) Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

71.

Sport England (2014) Active People Survey. Available at: https://www.sportengland.org/research/about-our-research/active-people-survey/ (accessed 7 February 2014).

72.

Tannehill

MacPhail

Walsh

Woods

(2015) What young people say about physical activity: The Children’s Sport Participation and Physical Activity. Sport, Education and Society 20 (4): 442–462.

73.

Thornley

(2012) The 2012 London Olympics: What legacy? Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events 4(2): 206–210.

74.

Weed

Coren

Fiore

. (2012) Developing a physical activity legacy for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: A policy-led systematic review. Perspectives in Public Health 132(2): 75–79.

75.

Wright

(2009) Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’: Governing bodies. In: Wright

Harwood

(eds) Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’: Governing Bodies. New York; London: Routledge, pp. 1–14.

76.

Wright

Halse

(2014) The healthy child citizen: Biopedagogies and web-based health promotion. British Journal of Sociology of Education 35(6): 837–855.

77.

Wright

MacDonald

Groom

(2003) Physical activity and young people: Beyond participation. Sport, Education and Society 8(1): 13–33.

78.

Wright

McLeod

(2012) Public memories and private meanings: Representing the “Happy Childhood” narrative in oral histories of adolescence and schooling in Australia, 1930s–1950s. Oral History Forum d’histoire orale (Making Educational Oral Histories in the 21st Century) 32: 1–19.