Alastair Upton, Chief Executive at the Bluecoat.This week is a nightmare. All during the development the Bluecoat’s offices have stayed in the building. Every time you seem to start a conversation someone starts drilling in the floor underneath or banging on the wall. After a year and a half of this I hardly notice the noise or dust.

It was all due to finish this week as we were to move over to the South West wing and our newly refurbished offices. The excitement of a finished space was tangible but it was snatched away as the ‘move in’ was delayed a week. However the ‘move out’ went ahead. Everyone is now ‘hot-officing’; squatting any empty desk in the area and hoping the electrics are on for Monday.

With the end of the job in sight and most of the programme decided we met to talk about interpretation. What do you say  about art? What do people want to know? What does the artist want you to know? Starting from the marketing material through signs to any catalogue, the Bluecoat will present the work to the public and must try not to stand between the two but help make the engagement direct. And who are the public? People who go to galleries every month, who have studied art history or dance or music? School children who have never been to a gallery before? Both these groups and many more. All need to feel that their needs are met.

It is hard to do all this at the same time so the trick is to have an entry level of information that is easily understood but that there is additional, more sophisticated information, for those who want it.

That said the Bluecoat has a particular position. We will be the only art space in the country which is a showcase for creativity from shops to artists studios to galleries to performance to education. In short at the Bluecoat you find art from ‘production to consumption’. This process will now inform our interpretation. How the work was made, what did the artist do. The audience will see behind the scenes and in doing so allow a more direct engagement with the art and the artist.

This should demystify some of the bullshit around art but expose the magic around its creation.

Alastair Upton, Chief Executive at the Bluecoat.