Podia projects

Strange word, podia. That's the plural of podium in case you were wondering. Nice to see a bit of grammatical correctness going on, considering the fact that 'stadiums' now seems to be the universally-accepted plural of 'stadium'.

Anyhow you may have heard about the Podia projects, an Olympic-themed art project organised by Lewisham Council and drawing on Olympic funding. The council press release describes them thus:

"For London 2012, Lewisham’s temporary public art installation project takes the podia out of the arena and drops new fantasy versions across the borough. A playful response to the building fanfare around 2012 – five winners’ podia to ensure that ‘everyone’s a winner’. APT, The Deptford Project, Deptford X and Goldsmiths, University of London have selected creative teams to create these new pieces, to begin in April 2012.

Pop Up Podiums [Editor's note: Grrr! At least be consistent with your podia!] is one of the outstanding projects granted the London 2012 Inspire mark, the badge of the London 2012 Inspire programme, which recognises exceptional and innovative projects inspired by the 2012 Games."

The locations for the podia were revealed back in April - they are the Deptford Lounge, 1st Bowl in Lewisham, Goldsmiths College and the roof of APT on Creekside 'with one more to be announced'.

Well if you pop into the Deptford Lounge you can have a go on our most local podium, designed by Carlos Quinones from Boro and Zoe Hamilton-Peters. Shown here in test at the APT Gallery, it has different pictures you can wind round to create your own 'winner' before having a photo taken with your head peeking over the top.

Zoe would love people to take photos of themselves on the podium and upload them to Facebook, and she has set up a page  to encourage you to share them publicly.