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300 Facts

Bluecoat's fascinating history revealed

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On 7th February 1991, American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer Tori Amos performed at Bluecoat, a year before her breakthrough single Crucify.

1992

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On 29th March 1997, in an event titled Power to the People, artists Cornford & Cross turned the gallery into a record fair for a day, one of Bluecoat's Mixing It live art commissions themed around art and pop music.

1997

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Janet Hodgson's ingenious 1999 film installation, History Lesson, imagined a day in the life of the 19th century Blue Coat School. Videos of several sequences were projected back into the places in the gallery where they were filmed.

1999

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In Peter McRae's 1988 Bluecoat live art commission, the artist presented a performance installation, Avenue of Heroes, on St George's Plateau, in which women, clad in white, sitting atop white plinths, held white flags - a comment on the site's

1988

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In March 2011, a Bluecoat-curated project with Chrysalis involved a parade that ended with a spectacular butterfly dance by Liverpool Lantern Company puppeteers at the 'Ralla', a disused railway path running from Halewood to Aintree.

2011

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On 13 March 1988, the Manchester-based Those Environmental Artists (TEA) constructed a temporary house in Bluecoat’s courtyard, using sculptural baggage.

1988

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Several Contemporary Art Society exhibitions have been staged at Bluecoat, starting in 1914 when work by Wyndham Lewis, Vanessa Bell and other leading modern British artists was included.

1914

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Bluecoat’s garden was once the playground for girls at the school. The boys' playground was on School Lane, where the Quaker Meeting House now stands.

1800s

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For the 1989 Video Positive festival, organised by Merseyside Moviola (later FACT), Mike Stubbs' installation at Bluecoat - Desert Island Dread - comprised TV monitors embedded in a desert island, a stuffed seal balancing a turning globe, a glitter ball

1989

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A 1796 guide to Liverpool, by W. Moss, describes the Blue-Coat Hospital - the charity school - as containing '79 orphan children, 143 fatherless children, and 58 whose parents are in indigent (poor) circumstances.'

1796

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Many events have been broadcast by the BBC from the Bluecoat.

1951

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In 1978 Liverpool artist Pam Holt curated, The Liverpool Nude, an exhibition of contemporary nudes at Bluecoat. Its poster depicted a detail of Jacob Epstein's sculpture at Lewis’s department store, known locally as 'Dicky Lewis.'

1978

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Organised by Bluecoat in collaboration with the ICA, London, Graphic Rap, was an exhibition in 1983 of new comics featuring work by, amongst others, New York artist Art Spiegelman, whose influential comic RAW, including the seminal strip Maus, was

1983

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On 12 April 1997, a performance by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Doing it for the Kids, featured a superstar tribute band that included Kylie Minogue, David Bowie, Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker impersonators.

1997

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In February 1969, Bluecoat showed British avant-garde artist John Latham's work in an exhibition, Review of a Dictionary. His work was also included in Public View, our 2017 exhibition featuring many of Bluecoat's alumni artists.

1969

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In 1912, Sandon Studios Society's redoubtable Fanny Calder articulated her vision for an arts centre that would attract people "interested in something more than fashion and football and bridge and the share market."

1912

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Following the efforts in 1813 of Blue Coat School treasurer Matthew Gregson, a drawing master was employed to teach at the school, but this was shortly discontinued.

1813

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The Blue Coat School accounts book for 8th August 1716 includes payments for timber and iron - and beer for the men working on the construction site.

1716

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Charles Reilly, Head of the University of Liverpool's School of Architecture, moved his department to Bluecoat in 1909, where it remained for nine years, the large room upstairs becoming a drawing studio for the students.

1909

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Silversmith Stan Hill had a studio at Bluecoat for many years, exhibiting frequently at contemporary craft gallery, the Bluecoat Display Centre. He also documented daily life at the arts centre, photographing many of its tenants, artists and visitors.

1970s and 1980s

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In 1977, Bluecoat ceramicist Julia Carter Preston was commissioned to produce a 50th anniversary plaque in her distinctive s'graffito style for the Bluecoat Society of Arts, and this was displayed, set into an iron gate leading to the garden from College

1977

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In August 1989, Bluecoat hosted an exhibition of photographs of popular TV drama Brookside, taken by Alex Laing, a young photographer who was tragically killed that year.

1989

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The Sandon Studios Society Music Group was particularly active in the 1960s, including concerts at Bluecoat of work by Peter Maxwell Davies and Elisabeth Lutyens, whose Music for Wind was premiered by The Sandon Ensemble. In April 1964, in the

1964

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Mexican artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his collaborators La Pocha Nostra, together with local performers, presented an electric performance, Ex-Centris, in Bluecoat's concert hall, to launch the 2002 Liverpool Biennial.

2002

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