Alastair Upton, Chief Executive at the BluecoatQuestion: Captain Beefheart had the first show of his paintings at the Bluecoat, in which City is this gallery? This was the Mastermind question the other week that got me thinking about the Bluecoat as an arts space.

The Captian Beefheart show was years ago, the 1970s sometime and I’ve just gone to sofa cinema to rent the DVD about him that I think has the footage of him here at the Bluecoat. Anyway it is just one example of the long history the Bluecoat has of working with artists in an unexpected way. Working with artists outside their normal sphere, cross over work between art forms, or even work not clearly from one genre or another has always interested us.

Of course as an arts space the whole point is the range of work that is done. Despite this it seems many people think of the Bluecoat as a visual art gallery first and foremost. This is slightly odd as many people’s memories of the Bluecoat, when they tell you about why they like it and what a great time they had, is memories of gigs, or performances (after they first tell you who they snogged in the garden).

We were talking last week about how, when we reopen, we need to balance how people think about the art delivered in the Bluecoat. We need to have a range with visual art of course but performance of music, dance and spoken word and all things in between that challenges visual arts supremacy.

We obviously have work to do to shift how we are seen.

As the crane swung in the ‘precious cargo’ of artists and arts administrators on to St George’s plateau on Friday night for the 2008 opening the cargo itself was in the hall being prodded into an orderly line order so it could burst through the false back of the container and on to the stage.

To gain maximum affect for the audience anyone who might be recognized by the crowd went first. So it was bands in the lead, who had had the foresight to drink first (and I think heavily) as the green room was dry, followed by actors and then I can’t remember but before visual arts was ‘fashion, hair and beauty’.

Bryan and I were representing the Bluecoat and had been placed in visual arts. The last I heard before going through the dry ice was Herbert shouting back at the visual arts team, all dressed head to toe in black, was ‘well darlings, you never really wanted to be beautiful’.