The secret to a successful capital project is all in the planning. With a bit of dead time available from Christmas to New Year I slotted in a serious dose of man-flu and rounded it all off with the norovirus. It felt right to get the whinging and the moaning, of which there was plenty, over before the start of ’08. Yes, the big year has arrived. It seems a bit weird to be here, and perhaps we should remember now all those who set out on the journey but fell by the wayside.

The year has started with another review of the new Bluecoat this time in Architectural Review. This in the words of Hans, our architect, is a ‘world player in architecture land’, (which really is a weird parallel universe) and they have raved about the building, noting how it stands out from the crowd of all the other developments in Liverpool. The article ends with the comment that ‘you don’t have to shout to be heard ……the building proving the power of understatement.’ This should be a good contrast to my screaming from the roof tops about how amazing the new building is.

We have named the day and it is an exclusive for the blog.

The Bluecoat will re-open on March 15 2008.

This is a week before Easter so inside our goal of early ’08 (or by the end of March). It won’t be easy getting it ready by then but the discussions here were that we if we missed Easter we couldn’t open until into April and we needed to be open for the sake of ’08, its visitors and audience as well as for funders, our tenants and ourselves.

We had our auction on Tuesday night at Leaf. It was an excellent night, with Simon O’Brien playing auctioneer. The artists had been hugely generous and we had about 50 art works and the bidding was at times fierce. I’m still quietly annoyed at not getting the two works I’d set my heart on but was too tight fisted to buy.

'My god, this is good'. These are the opening words of the first review of the redevelopment of the Bluecoat. They were published at the end of last week in the RIBA journal and written by the editor.