Nov 15 2006 Museum

Museum launch dinner

Inspired by the National Museums Liverpool Dinner to launch the new Museum of Liverpool.

The museum is due for opening in 2010 and last night was our first preview of what it intends to showcase.

Fantastic speech from the impressive Director David Fleming. Clearly he needs support, not least financially, on an ongoing basis, and the passion and excitement for what he and his team are creating will go a long way to winning that support.

The museum it seems, will be a warts-and-all presntation of our city's past and present. A celebration of its importance and creativity, but also a lasting warning to its darkest excesses.

I sat next to the museum's Sharon Glanville, who as well as being a charming and fascinating dinner companion encouraged me greatly when she talked of how the museum would seek to become part of the city's bar-restaurant culture too. And how they saw its position on the banks of the Mersey making it a destination for people who didn't even plan to look at a single exhibit.

Do you know, last night was the first time I felt Liverpool wasn't simply playing catch-up with other major British cities. It was striding ahead. This museum is world-class; something to be envied by the rest of the country.

www.museumofliverpool.org.uk

There were 300 people in that room and I'd be interested to know how many of them felt the same thing I did.

If you're out there, leave a comment.

Lynne and I to see the consultant tonight to discuss her brain scan. Hours seem like days.