Shakespeare's Global Communities

‘Shakespeare’s Global Communities’ is a collaborative research review of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival (WSF), which was one of the key strands of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. The project sought to document through 131 review essays and blog posts each of the Shakespeare-related performances and events that were linked to the Festival, asking the central research question: ‘What does the WSF reveal about Shakespeare’s status as a site for intercultural community building in the twenty-first century?’ The central manifestation of the project was the interactive website www. yearofshakespeare.com, where all review essays, blogs and podcasts were uploaded and where participants across professional and cultural communities could post their own responses to the WSF via discussion threads, Twitter and Facebook. The project involved two one-day workshops in which members of different professional communities involved in WSF activities met to discuss the questions the Festival raised about Shakespeare in relation to British cultural politics, national identity and the global creative economy.