Bluecoat Display Centre (Bdc) is an independent charitable organisation, which aims to promote contemporary applied arts both nationally and internationally, to support the craft infrastructure through: extending audiences for contemporary craft and working with leading North West practitioners; enhancing lives through education, participation and learning; and improving the health and wellbeing of the communities of Liverpool and beyond.
– Bdc aims to promote excellence in design and workmanship within the contemporary applied arts both nationally and internationally.
– We aim to increase the public’s awareness and appreciation of the work of leading and emerging artists through exhibition, education, display and sale, and consequently to support the contemporary craft infrastructure.
– Bdc works closely with local universities, particularly Liverpool Hope University’s Department of Fine and Applied Arts, to support students leaving university and keeping them in the city by offering them a retail outlet for their work and some professional development advice sessions.
– We offer an internship programme for students and recent graduates to gain experience working in the gallery and craft sector, and also employing them on a casual basis.
– Bdc aims to maintain its national and international reputation for contemporary craft, and to continue to provide stimulating exhibitions of local, national and international artists, to provide a unique visitor attraction.
Bluecoat Display Centre welcomes enquiries from organisations regarding charitable giving who empathise with our aims, and has many sponsorship opportunities connected to the exhibition and workshop programme.
Please contact crafts@bluecoatdisplaycentre.com for more information.
The Bluecoat Display Centre provide a platform for all designer-makers. We recognise the need to represent all sections of society and to effect change in widespread inequalities which we acknowledge exist in the craft sector.
We recognise our role and responsibility to ensure that everyone can make, engage with and enjoy craft.
We are committed to focusing on diversity which includes the selection of makers who display in the gallery, audiences with whom we connect and the recruitment of trustees, staff and volunteers.
We are working to build more trusting relationships with makers and audiences who may currently regard our venue as a place in which they don’t feel comfortable or feel under-represented.
Our focus on diversity includes the Bdc’s Director’s participation in the Craft UK Anti-racism and Diversity working group (facilitated by the Crafts Council). This group is actively working as a collective towards developing a code of conduct template and wider policy of diversity best practice. This will be shared with, and used by, other craft galleries and organisations to ensure structural change at a national level.
Our outreach work gives us the opportunity to share hands-on making and craft techniques with people in the local community including under-represented groups. This enables people who have been unable to access such opportunities for learning to develop their skills and gain positive health benefits which the act of making can give.
We are a member of COol (Creative Organisations of Liverpool). COoL, a collective of 27 arts organisations based in the Liverpool City Region is the leading cultural partnership model of its kind in the UK. We use our membership to contribute to and access sharing of diversity, inclusion and collaborative best practice.
Registered Charity No. 1136680
Bluecoat Display Centre LTD, company limited by guarantee, No. 03175344
Bluecoat Display Centre (Trading) LTD is a non profit distributing company whose profits support Bluecoat Display Centre’s charitable work. Company limited by guarantee, No. 07288287