00:00It's the oldest building in Liverpool city centre and for more than 300 years the Blue Coat has stood as asylum witness to the city's story from maritime powerhouse to cultural capital.
00:12We could go to every room and I could tell you about things that happened in that room, whether it was Yoko Ono coming here or Stravinsky coming here.
00:20You know, there's so many stories and I think it's sort of in the bricks and mortar, those stories are still, the resonances, the echoes of the past are still here.
00:30Built in 1717 is a charity school for poor children founded by local rector Robert Stithe and Sea Captain Brian Blundell.
00:38It's become a thriving hub for contemporary art and creativity and one of the most iconic addresses in the city.
00:45But if you look at old maps of Liverpool, pretty much all around us was fields.
00:51I mean, where Church Street is, that was there, but the other side of Church Street was just fields.
00:56Up the road where we all used to go road walks, Duke Street, Bold Street, that was only just sort of developing as a sort of merchant's quarter.
01:04The current Grade 1 listed building originally housed 50 boarders who spent much of their time helping the school generate income
01:12alongside basic lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic.
01:15And they worked really hard. It was like a manufacturing, a factory.
01:19The kids had to work two thirds of the day making pins, spinning cotton, picking ochre, which is unpicking these tangled ropes from ships.
01:29It was a physical hard life for these poor kids.
01:32Over time, Liverpool boomed due to transatlantic trade and this modest charity school grew alongside it.
01:40Obviously what fuelled a lot of this was the slave trade and we've done a lot of work around that in working with contemporary artists.
01:47But that's what drove the development of places like this.
01:52You know, it was a philanthropic institution. It wasn't a school as we think of it now. It was actually done as an orphanage.
01:59But by 1906, it had outgrown its city centre home and moved to Wavertree, leaving the Bluecoat building temporarily empty.
02:06That's when the arts moved in. A young collective, the Sanddon Studio Society set up shop here, laying the foundations for what would become the UK's very first art centre.
02:17It means we have a very rich participation programme for communities, particularly working with adults with learning disabilities.
02:25It's called the Blue Room. And it's just a very active building.
02:29So you've got the shops, you've got the cafe, you've got the garden, but there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes.
02:34From then on, the Bluecoat became a creative powerhouse, hosting everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Russian ballet dancers.
02:41So there's a lot of stories associated with the garden in terms of its function.
02:46You know, it had originally been, if we look at old plans of the building, of the city, it was an orchard.
02:52We think there was an orchard there. We think it was the girls' playground.
02:55During the Second World War, air raid shelters were there.
