The core of the building has now been handed over to our contractors Gilbert Ash, and this has naturally meant big changes for us, our audiences and visitors.

We’ve put information boards round our Foyer and painted our temporary Scratch Bar ramp. The brilliant Bread Collective have designed a number of new logos for us to use, relating to many different aspects of the project. In early January they braved the cold themselves and spent a day doing this:

You’ll also find information boards around the building and we’ll be adding to our set of informational beermats shortly as well.

During the day, all travel between the front and rear of the building is only via the outside via Theatre Street or Town Hall Road, and a colonnade of scaffolding which is somehow rather beautiful at night.

For those seeing shows in the Grand Hall, we open the East Corridor for evenings only.

And if you peer through the windows on the left, you’ll see scaffolding encircling the inside of the Courtyard as we remove the old lift, extension to the Grand Hall Kitchen, and start to open windows bricked up over 50 years ago.

As the evenings start to become lighter, this will be more and more visible, and more interesting as the works continue. The Courtyard will be truly transformed by 2016, with a roof terrace at second floor level and a brand new open-air performance space inside. We hope you’ll enjoy the journey with us.