Ten years ago this week, the curtain raised on Danny Boyle’s London 2012 opening ceremony, and it felt like a collective weight fell from our nation’s shoulders. What followed was a magical summer. London in particular fizzed with positivity and kindness — exemplified by the brilliant Games Makers.
There was one person who always believed that London 2012 was going to be such a roaring success. My mum, Dame Tessa Jowell, who was integral in delivering the Games. She did this by harnessing her experience from a lifetime of public service; using her grit, determination, and humanity.
It was both tragic and fitting that the final three months of her life were spent campaigning. She spotlighted the fact that the UK has one of the worst cancer survival rates in western Europe, and just as shockingly, that brain cancer is the biggest cancer killer of children and people under 40. And yet NHS treatment for it has not changed in decades.
Her vision, shared in that powerful speech in the House of Lords, became the blueprint of the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, of which I and the Tessa Jowell Foundation are founding members.
Since launching in 2018, the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission working with our partners has already achieved so much. Leading the co-creation of a national brain cancer strategy, gathering the most comprehensive data on NHS brain cancer services ever and accrediting 17 Tessa Jowell Centres of Excellence at hospitals across Britain.
To continue to build on my mum’s legacy, we have spent the last few weeks advertising our #TurnUpForTessa campaign, culminating in events all across the country and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park last night, which showed a newly edited version of the Olympics and Paralympics opening ceremonies — with all proceeds going to the Tessa Jowell Foundation.
Too often we are told to put the biggest issues in the ‘too difficult’ box. But my mum worked with people one-by-one to make solutions to these challenges possible, and then inevitable. That is what our mission, in her memory, is trying to do by transforming NHS brain cancer care.
