Special Olympics Ceremonies
The Meaning of Inclusion
Most ceremonies are performed for an audience. This one had to be performed by the people it was about
The Special Olympics World Games 2019 was the biggest event ever held in Abu Dhabi – the first time a country in the Middle East had hosted it, with 12,000 athletes from 190 nations, 40,000 people in the stadium, and millions watching across 160 broadcast nations.
We were asked to create the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. The brief could have been about people with intellectual differences. We decided it had to be made with them instead.
So we went to community groups across the UAE and invited people in. They became The Makers.
Over six months of workshops, they didn’t advise on the Ceremonies – they built them. The Makers wrote, produced, and hosted both shows.
They were the guiding voices in every room where a decision got made.
Around them grew a cast of more than 1,500 – volunteer dancers, Special Olympics medallists, celebrity ambassadors, 750 UAE school children.
Five hundred young volunteers performed Perpetual Motion, a piece of choreography and spoken word created by the Makers themselves.
Hundreds more children joined a Unified Choir. A combined team of Special Olympics athletes and Olympians carried the Flame of Hope into the stadium, where a 10-metre Cauldron, engraved with 195 messages of support from Special Olympics communities around the world rose from the stage as the torch was lit.
"This was the best World Games ever."
Timothy Shriver, Chairman, Special Olympics
160 broadcast nations.
1,500 local volunteers.
30,000 in the stadium.
But the number that matters most is six – the months The Makers spent turning their own ideas into a ceremony the world would watch.
We didn’t tell the world what people with intellectual differences can do.
We handed them the stage and let them show it themselves.
