It’s been a while since I last blogged, but those who have been following will know there’s been a lot happening.

Our building project has now restarted following the fire of 13th March, but in the meantime, there has been constant change for the staff here. You may have been following our Twitter where you’d have seen plenty of pictures of temporary offices with 30+ people sitting practically in each other’s laps, and walls papered with amazing and touching well-wishes and offers of help and support.

Finally, we have relocated to the one area we thought we’d never experience – the east attic of the building. The 3 rooms up here have always been the preserve of the companies who have office space within the building, such as Ridiculusmus and the Puppet Centre. Personally, on the rare occasions I’ve entered the rooms, I’ve always been very jealous of the view which, until the last phase of building works is complete and a gigantic picture window is installed, is the best in the building, looking north-east towards the famous power station.

If you’ve been to a show in our Porter’s Mess, you’ll have come through the very narrow corridor towards the Rafters which bounded the edge of these offices, but have probably never been into those rooms, except for during the Masque of the Red Death. One space which forms part of the ‘suite’ is the Dark Room, previously a photographic space during the early years of the building’s use as a community arts centre and then as BAC. Most recently this practically windowless space has been painted entirely black and been packed to the ceiling with all manner of technical equipment.

Obviously at this point, I would normally include a photo of ‘before’ but our digital photo archive has been segregated in the abandoned Lower Hall offices so for the moment, you will have to do without.

However, it’s amazing what you can do when you remove a few partition walls and our BAC support staff get busy with the paint and power tools.

Finally we have a space to call our own for the next year, and even Pluto has a new boudoir.

He’s very taken with his ability to supervise all workers…

Although he does keep leaving his mouse lying about, which has caused a few minor heart attacks as it is mistaken for the real thing.