MORE than 20 organisations have joined forces in Dorset to orchestrate the smooth running of the sailing competition and associated events for London 2012.

Key contacts for each of the groups will be bringing insight to their activities through a weekly column in the Dorset Echo.

Here’s Katharine Lane, Superact associate director and Bandstand Marathon project manager.

I HAVE been working on the Bandstand Marathon project since it started life in 2008 in the South West.

This year I am taking the lead as we aim to organise 500 events on bandstands across the UK, all on Sunday, September 9.

The Bandstand Marathon is taking place on the closing day of the Paralympic Games and hopes to see over 100,000 people attend events across the UK and provide performance opportunities for up to 30,000 amateur and voluntary musicians.

My role involves managing and co-ordinating Superact’s team, working with local authorities, recruiting local programmers and finding performing groups.

The event is part of the London 2012 Festival, so I have to liaise with LOCOG on many elements of project delivery.

I liaise regularly with our project partners Making Music and DCLG and make sure everyone is regularly updated and on track!

We are also co-ordinating a series of regional induction events for people taking part in the Bandstand Marathon, which will be a great chance to get out and meet everyone involved.

We aim to see a huge variety of musical genres, from brass bands to Bangra groups, punk bands to folk groups.

This is a real opportunity to showcase the UK’s talented amateur and voluntary musicians.

We want to see communities coming together to celebrate the finale of the Games.

This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work on such an exciting community arts project.

It’s great to see so many amateur and voluntary musicians getting involved and celebrating their local community performance spaces.

Bandstands are often forgotten and underused performance venues so we have to rejuvenate them in some way through this project.

I’m really looking forward to hearing more innovative stories of bandstands that are being re-opened as part of this event, and examples of innovation such as a bandstand being made out of recycled materials.

Visit bandstandmarathon.org.uk