Published Friday, 04 November 2011
Five hundred cast and crew will take part in the Land Of Giants next summer with acrobatics, aerial dance and pyrotechnics combining for a one-off celebratory event.
Londonderry, Enniskillen and the Causeway coast will all play a role in the three-month Cultural Olympiad.
On Friday, London 2012 and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland announced details of many of the events which will run from 21 June, through the Olympics and up to the last day of the Paralympic Games on 9 September.
Stormont Culture Minister Carál Ní Chuilín has welcomed the line-up.
"Our participation here in the north of Ireland with the festival gives us a strong connection with the Games and allows us to showcase some of the very best of our local talent as well as giving people here a chance to see works by internationally acclaimed artists and performers," she said.
"This is a fantastic opportunity for local people to be part of a truly historic event so close to our shores in such an important year for the north of Ireland."
As part of the festival, Turner Prize-winning artist and musician Martin Creed will invite the people of Northern Ireland to join in with All The Bells, a project which encourages people across the UK to ring bells as loudly and quickly as they can at 8am on 27 July 2012 to welcome the competing nations on the first day of the Games.
Other notable events will include a staging of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde by NI Opera, featuring a large cast of local schoolchildren in a novel setting for an opera - Belfast Zoo.
Internationally renowned German artist Hans Peter Kuhn will bring his project Flags to the Causeway coast. For the event, a series of flags, red on one side, yellow on the other, will stretch along the bay as it approaches the Giant's Causeway.
In Fermanagh, legendary theatre director Robert Wilson's adaptation of Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett will be presented as part of the proposed Happy Days - Enniskillen International Festival Of Beckett.
And in Derry, Peace One Day's countdown to Global Truce 2012 will open the festival with the band Massive Attack headlining a rock concert at Ebrington Barracks.
Rosemary Kelly, Chair of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, described the arts programme of events as "cohesive and powerful."
Ruth Mackenzie, director of the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival, said audiences in Northern Ireland were in for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.