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.

I was off early this morning to another Phil Redmond show as he launched ‘open culture’. It was the same super slick ‘self-depreciation and scouse pride, I’m bumbling here while fully in control’ show which he turns on with such ease. The product looked good too.  Open Culture is a web site that is a Liverpool cultural space that everyone can use and shape with their content. We are working on a project that we could well tie in with this.

I’m just back from a meeting with the design team. This is the group of consultants who work for the Bluecoat on the building project including the architects, project managers, quantity surveyor and some engineers. We were going through in as much detail as we can the schedule of works the builders Kier have put forward until completion. While this gives a finish date to the work it is not straight forward as the document comes with two pages of itemised risks that all might delay the works. Most of these are minor but some could have significant consequences.