When Bluecoat formally established itself as an arts centre in 1927, it was the first of its kind in this country.
In 2027 we mark our centenary under the banner ‘A Century of Breaking New Ground’. It is a moment to honour a remarkable artistic lineage, from the first UK showings of Picasso and Matisse outside London through to Yoko Ono in 1967. It is also a reminder that Bluecoat has always been a place where new ideas get tried out and given room. Organisations such as Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, and the venture that became FACT, took their first steps here.
That instinct has never left us. Over the last decade we have shown artists from around the world and from around the corner, the Texan artist Deborah Roberts and Liverpool’s own Amber Akaunu among many. We have hosted studio residencies: the performance artist Joshua Clague in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries studio, and poet Jennifer Lee Tsai in the Wittenham. Both went on to share work they created here in exhibitions and events as part of the Bluecoat's programme, to an ever-growing and varied audience.
This appointment also comes at a demanding time for the arts.
The pressures are well known to anyone who follows the sector: funding has been tight for years, our buildings are ageing and expensive to look after, the cost-of-living crisis is still being felt, and the wider political picture is hard to read. What counts is how an organisation responds. Across our hundred years we have seen arts policy swing one way and then the other, and what we have taken from that is fairly simple. The places that last are the ones that keep making the case for the arts through the work they do. So we are not battening down the hatches. We are building momentum, through the programme itself, through the ambition of the artists and communities around us, and through preparing a new strategy that will set us up for what comes next.
Some of that renewal is physical. We have just completed our new Events Space, a flexible venue that can host anything from a live performance to a wedding, and it opens up a whole new kind of programming for us. We are keen to see how the Creative Director makes use of spaces like this to put on work that pulls in a wide audience and gives people a reason to try something they might not have chosen for themselves.
This is a role with real authority over the artistic life of Bluecoat, and a clear remit to renew it.
The first job will be to pull the centenary’s programme strands together into a single artistic statement that hangs together. We are clear that 2027 should be more than a year of celebrations. It needs to be a serious piece of work in its own right, an honest attempt to say what an arts centre is for at this point in time. The second job, and to my mind the bigger one, is to treat 2027 as a starting point rather than a finish line, and to build an artistic vision and a way of working that will carry Bluecoat through 2028 and well beyond.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It is a chance to shape a cultural moment that matters nationally, and to have a real say in what an arts centre can be in this century. If that sounds like you, I would love to hear from you.
Mary Cloake, Chief Executive of the Bluecoat
Header image: Bruce Asbestos, OK! Cherub!, Bluecoat installation, 2022. Photography by Rob Battersby