AI understands that Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House and the former chief executive of BBC News, is to be the sought for “ringmaster” for the Cultural Olympics.

His appointment to the London 2012 organising committee (Locog), chaired by the Olympic gold medallist Sebastian Coe, was expected to be announced this week. He will then become chair of the Cultural Olympiad committee, with an almost new board expected to include major cultural figures such as Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery, Nicholas Serota of the Tate and Alan Davey of ACE.

Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre who led the cultural bid that won the 2012 Games for London, is expected to step down as chair but to remain involved.

The International Olympics Committee makes a cultural element an essential part of bids for the Games, and it is believed that a programme of national cultural inclusivity in the 2012 proposals helped to ensure London beat Paris.

But since then there has been growing dissatisfaction with the lack of obvious focus for cultural input. In his last interview as chairman of the Arts Council, given to AI in February, Sir Christopher Frayling said the Cultural Olympics needed a “ringmaster” to raise the profile and give a new impetus. “It’s over complicated, too brand obsessed, and needs an arts person at its head to smack it into place, as Casson did with the Festival of Britain and Phil Redmond has done with Liverpool” he told us.