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Let the games begin: what it’s like to write the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony

The 2026 Commonwealth Games kick off in Glasgow this week, with last night’s Opening Ceremony – a “fully immersive experience” staged in Glasgow’s Hydro Arena, an iconic venue that has also hosted some of the world’s biggest music stars – setting the stage for a summer of more spectacular sport.

So what does it take to stage an event on such a large scale, for an audience who will be tuning in all over the world? We asked writer and RLF Fellow Maeve Clarke, who was part of the Creative Team for the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, to tell us what it was like.

“We’re looking for a local writer and your name came up in conversation. Would you be interested?” – Sender unknown. Dec 2020.

I wasn’t feeling well and had an urgent deadline. My reply was brief and to the point. ‘Possibly. More details needed, please. Thank you.’ Afterwards, I felt guilty for the brevity of my message but really gave it little thought.

The response came quickly, saying that I would be working with a renowned theatre director and would I be interested in talking to him. Still no mention of the Commonwealth Games at this point, but I said yes.

A Zoom meeting was arranged with the Artistic Director, Iqbal Khan. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, so I was very relaxed. It wasn’t an interview, more of a chat – one full of warmth and exchange of ideas about Birmingham and its history. When I was contacted for a second time in January 2021, I was both excited and terrified by turns. Now things were serious. I didn’t know what to prepare or how, and I couldn’t talk to anybody about it because everything was hush-hush. Once I got the job, I signed a 29-page contract, which swore me to secrecy and outlined the many different ways I could be sued if I talked about the event before it was officially announced. That is one of the reasons why you never hear who the Creative Team is until about a month before the Games begin.

Parkour Riders volunteers construct a large-scale Printing Press, used in one of the sequences from the 2022 Commonwealth Games at the Alexander Stadium, Birmingham. © Maeve Clarke.

The first Creative Team meeting took place outdoors, in Digbeth, in March. Covid restrictions were only just beginning to lift. There were six of us: Artistic Director, designer, composer, video director, writer and producer, sitting at tables strictly two metres apart. It was only then that I learned my work would underpin the entire narrative of the Opening Ceremony. I was the lynch pin upon which all other decisions would be made. Having never worked on anything of this scale, and being surrounded by experts in this field, I’d never felt more out of depth in my life.

There was no specific brief, but we knew we wanted to create something that reflected Birmingham’s history, its trades and multiculturalism, and its status as Europe’s youngest city. Centre stage would be a bull, long seen as a symbol for the city, and Birmingham’s Bull Ring Market was an obvious inspiration for the ceremony’s ‘stage’.

Originally a bull baiting ring that also provided meat to the butcher shops that surrounded the marketplace, the Bull Ring has served as a market and meeting place throughout its existence, bearing witness to much of the city’s history and early cultural exchanges. In 2003, a bronze bull – The Guardian – ­was placed at the entrance to the Bull Ring, as a representation of the city’s strength, energy and resilience. We wanted our bull – nicknamed ‘Raging Bull’ – to be bigger than anything the city had ever seen before. Little did we realise how important this bull, made of recyclable materials and parts designed to represent the industrial trades of the Black Country, was to become.

Constructing ‘Raging Bull’, which would become the centre piece of the 2022 Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony, at Artem Studios, London. © Maeve Clarke.

Multiple storylines were created and then discarded. Though determined to show the best of Birmingham, we were not afraid to address its sometimes difficult past. Certain themes – race riots and immigration – had to be diluted, if we wanted to retain our funding. During our talks about multiculturalism, I knew it was important to include the white working-class. Luckily, our sizzle reel, presentations and set design were extremely well received and kept the government, city council and other key stakeholders on board. Concerns were overcome by creative use of music, choreography and costumes to represent tension between different cultural groups.

Opening Ceremonies are broadcast internationally, so the challenge lies in how to convey a story without using words. The backstory is provided by each country’s broadcasting team, but the visuals, movement and symbolism should all be self-explanatory.

Initially, I wrote scripts for different scenes, but these were not needed. What they wanted was a second-by-second description of every single moment of the show, which would serve as the cue for the technical, production, events timing and operations teams. For example:

00.00: Raging Bull (RB) roars

00.02: Bull Chain Women (BCH) appear pulling heavy chain.

00.02-00.10: Remaining BCH appear.

00.15: RB enters roaring.

00.20 BCH struggle to contain RB.

00.25: RB breaks free.

Every single change, no matter how minor, was documented daily. If the Bull looked right instead of left; if we changed camera angles; the entrances, exits and sound effects, such as when the music soared or faded. In the final six weeks or so, I worked daily with the Artistic Director and the specialist timings writer, and learned so much from being able to observe an expert at work.

Maeve Clarke (back row), the Bards of Birmingham volunteers aka ‘the BoBs,’ and members of the Creative and Technical Teams review progress at Alexander Stadium.

Once rehearsals moved to the Alexander Stadium – redeveloped in time for the Games and now the largest athletics stadium in the UK – the days became even longer. There was no room for ego or complaints and there were lots of tears – not only mine!

I did all the research for each stage of the ceremony, including for the set designers and sound design team. I wrote the King’s speech and the broadcast commentary for the BBC, as well as the copy for the official CG Brochure. The early months were intense, particularly as I was feeling my way, but as the ceremony began to take shape, my role became less central. From a team of six, we were now a team of several hundred people.

I loved writing the scenes featuring the Black Country female chain makers, whose 10-week strike in 1910 helped established the principle of a minimum wage for all, and the first entrance of the 10-metre high Bull. The Bull now stands on permanent display at New Street Station, but I will never forget first seeing it as a pencil sketch on a piece of A4 paper.

Other favourites include writing lyrics for a song in homage to Birmingham’s inventions – which was performed by drag artist Ginny Lemon atop a hot air balloon suspended high above the Alexander Stadium – as well as the soundbites for the giant puppets representing figures such as Elgar and Shakespeare.

Rehearsing the hot air balloon sequence at the Alexander Stadium.

Have I found fame and fortune since the Games? No!

After the Games, Steven Knight, Executive Producer of the Opening Ceremony and creator of hit TV show Peaky Blinders, invited me to be in the Writing Room for his next TV series, subject to the production company’s approval. My lack of TV writing experience counted against me, but in February, one of the Producers called to say that she had recommended me as a writer for a big event happening in Birmingham. No details were given and no promises were made. I haven’t heard anything, but that call stilled that little voice in my head that every so often asked, “Maeve, do you think you were good enough?”

Maeve Clarke is a published novelist and short story writer from Birmingham. She has written for the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) market, children’s fiction for reluctant readers and also writes for stage. She has lived and worked in Spain, Italy and China teaching EFL and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Her latest novel, A Handful of Nutmeg, will be published June 2027.

This article originally appeared on our Substack.

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