Bringing the arts together is the Games’ real legacy

The People Will Never Be Defeated! is the Chilean protest song that comes to mind as Londoners deal with the challenges of the Olympics’ tightening grip on the city’s transport system. As the international focus shifts to the Olympic Park in Stratford, this is surely the time for Londoners to reclaim the streets, and take a few weeks to enjoy their own astonishing culture.

Partnerships and collaborations between arts organisations on an unprecedented scale have created an outstanding summer of cultural events in the capital, giving huge crowds the chance to participate in the arts as never before. From the Big Dance to the Tate’s Tanks, audiences are now part of the process of making art, not just consuming it. This idea is taken to the ultimate degree in the Barbican, Create and Theatre Royal Stratford East’s interactive show You Me Bum Bum Train, involving hundreds of volunteers performing for a single audience member.

Organisations which may once have been rivals have got round the table to put on work on a scale not seen before in the city. The stunning, sold-out Pina Bausch season was a result of a new partnership between Sadler’s Wells and the Barbican, while funders, broadcasters, local authorities and arts organisations have joined forces under the inspiring leadership of Cultural Olympiad chairman Tony Hall to show that the arts in London are greater than the sum of their parts.

This new, collaborative era means Londoners can get off the Tube and experience world-class art across the city. It is only a short walk past St Paul’s Cathedral and across the Millennium Bridge from the Barbican’s exhibitions of Bauhaus and James Bond to Tino Sehgal’s new Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern. It is only a stroll from Trafalgar Square and the inventive Metamorphosis exhibition of art, dance and music at the National Gallery to Shakespeare: Staging the World at the British Museum, an exploration of the poet’s relationship with the world.

At the climax of the Cultural Olympiad in Ruth McKenzie’s London 2012 Festival, the capital’s unique range of open spaces has come into its own. Last weekend the BT River of Music saw musicians from across the world on stages along the Thames — from brilliant east London young soloists playing alongside Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the Tower of London to Baaba Maal lighting up London Pleasure Gardens. On the same day crowds filled the streets of Shoreditch and Hackney to welcome the Olympic torch on its London journey, experiencing spectacular carnival teams from Rio de Janeiro that gave a taste of what to expect as we hand the torch to Rio 2016.

As we look towards the period of austerity that will inevitably follow the Games, the lesson that by working together we can do more with less is a vital one. Artists and arts managers are supremely creative and imaginative when it comes to finding ways through, surmounting problems and delivering more for our audiences. The arts being firmly established at the centre of our lives, and of our city, is one small part of the legacy of 2012 that will live on.

Sir Nicholas Kenyon is managing director of the Barbican Centre.