one of the big stories in the local creative scene is the conversion of wood end [originally home to C20th literary superstars the sitwells, more recently a museum] into scarborough’s very own creative industries centre. situated next to the art gallery in a rather pleasant leafy part of the town it’s been interesting to see what was in danger of becoming a building at risk be transformed with addition of a new wing which will apparantley have a ‘living roof’. the centre will have office space, artists studios and exhibition space as well as housing the museums and galleries offices and stores.

today the centre manager was formally announced. so welcome to andrew clay [pictured above in front of the development], currently centre manager of round foundry in leeds who is leaving the big city for life by the sea. i suspect he’ll be the first of many as the buzz about the areas creative lifestyle grows. meanwhile the rest of us are waiting to hear about the centre’s charges. the consensus at electric angel hq is that if it has a better view than our current studio we might be interested… still, you can see the sea from the kitchenette where we are now, although it does mean leaning over the microwave oven - an elderly device that we share serious doubts about. we can probably merit the move on health and safety grounds alone…

a quick mention for the sitwells whilst we’re on topic. for some reason we had the above photo of the sitwells on the studio wall when i used to manage a design and multimedia team at leeds metropolitan university. i think it was there purely so we could enjoy the profiles. rarely is a family blessed with such a great collection and indeed variety of facial protuberances. the sitwells have been criticised for being such rampant self-publicists (they’d have been ferocious bloggers) but noses like that deserve as wide an audience as possible. hats off to them.