This year's Greenwich and Docklands International Festival is bringing the arts to a new ball park. Kerry Ann Eustice finds out how and why the event is bringing sport and art together.

Large scale venues - think The O2, Millennium Stadium and Wembley - often double up as sports and performance spaces. Yet, it is a rare occasion when arts appreciators and sports fans come together to be entertained.

But the Greenwich and Docklands Festival (GDIF) - a four day feast of street art, performance and visual spectacle - is set to change that, and is tempting sports fans out of the stadiums and coaxing arts lovers from galleries to rub shoulders in south east London.

The Greenwich and Docklands Festival is tempting sports fans out of the stadiums and coaxing arts lovers from galleries to rub shoulders in south east London.

Taking the energy and excitement of sport and merging it with the beauty and flair of art and performance is an exciting prospect for Bradley Hemmings, GDIF's artistic director.

"One of the key things which have inspired this year's festival is this idea of linking up sport and the arts," he said with the enthusiasm of a footie fan before a cup final or an art buff who has just stumbled across a freshly-painted Banksy graffiti mural.

"Everybody is mindful of the handover from Beijing to London for the Olympics.

"There's a cultural programme which is being developed for the Olympic games and one of the themes is how to bring sport and the arts closer together.

"So we're sort of stealing a march on that by commissioning and creating some very special projects which experiment with that and bring art and sport together."

"There's a cultural programme which is being developed for the Olympic games and one of the themes is how to bring sport and the arts closer together."

But how exactly do you blend arts and sports? Especially considering there's been many a moan about the games absorbing the arts' funding provision.

Well, it has not been too tricky. In fact, it has been a diving pool of inspiration for the talent involved in this year's programme. So much so, The Greenwich Wheel - unveiled on GDIF weekend - will be fighting for the limelight.

Physical theatre gets a whole new meaning in Run! a homage to and history of running at the National Maritime Museum, involving schools in Greenwich such as Morden Mount, Notre Dame, Thomas Tallis and Halstow.

At The O2, Time is like Water Flowing, a Chinese-themed performance loosely linked to the Beijing Olympics, will take martial arts such as Wushu and Tai Chi, a 16m sq canvas and bring a new dimension to action painting.

Strange Fruit - aerial art supremos and GDIF regulars - are setting up their four-metre high performance poles in Cutty Sark Gardens for an innovative take on sporting traditions for The Medal Ceremony.

"It's easier to bring art and sport together in the context of outdoor arts and events than it might be in a theatre or a concert hall."

"It's easier to bring art and sport together in the context of outdoor arts and events than it might be in a theatre or a concert hall," said Bradley of this year's challenging theme.

"There's a particular opportunity because of the unusual nature of what we do in making this happen and it is a new experiment."

He added: "There is an enormous gulf very often between sports and the arts in terms of TV scheduling and different kinds of audiences. Some people cross over both, of course, and they always have done.

"But it's an interesting journey to go on and it is exciting 2012 has wanted to do that.

"There is an enormous gulf very often between sports and the arts in terms of TV scheduling and different kinds of audiences."

"We're going to bring in audiences through this which wouldn't usually go to an arts event. That's very important."

As the 2012 Olympics approaches, GDIF scores high by allowing sports and arts to share a podium. But the real winning teams will be audiences, according to Bradley.

"We're going to bring in audiences through this which wouldn't usually go to an arts event. That's very important."

"We can put our hand on our heart and say our audiences look like the area we're performing in," he said. "People from all walks of life, all ages and all cultures.

"A lot of what you do with outdoor performance doesn't have any text or language, so it makes it very accessible to people from different cultures. It's a great unifying, community cohesion experience to put on these events."

GDIF, various venues, June 19 to 22. Visit festival.org or call 020 8305 1818.