Bryan Biggs has worked at Bluecoat over four decades, overseeing many aspects of the arts centre's work, from gallery exhibitions to capital development. He has been involved in other cultural organisations on Merseyside including the boards of FACT and Liverpool Biennial. He recently oversaw Bluecoat's tercentenary year, 2017, and creation of a new website, My Bluecoat, featuring material from the arts centre's archive.

John Belchem, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Liverpool, is acknowledged as Liverpool's leading historian, whose many publications include editing the Liverpool 800 book, published on the city's 800th anniversary. He recently contributed to the Peterloo Massacre bicentenary programme.

"Bluecoat is in large measure a celebratory volume, designed to draw attention to the many achievements of the institution and concluding with a heartfelt plea for further support in difficult times." William Whyte, Northern History

"Bluecoat, Liverpool: The UK's First Arts Centre offers different insights for the range of reader that its editors, Bryan Biggs and John Belchem, envisaged in their conception of this book... The diverse contents and multiple narratives of this collection, slots quite neatly into a set of interconnected academic and cultural policy niches." Jonathan Harris, Journal of British Studies