Stuck for a last-minute Christmas pressie?  I was in the city centre yesterday and had one of those days where you can’t move a few feet without bumping into an old friend and stopping for a bit of a yarn.  But I felt a bit guilty – everyone I was chatting to had the hunted, manic look of someone who still has to find and buy a lot of Christmas presents before the end of the week – whereas I am in the happy position of having all the shopping done (I think….) (edit: Susan “suggests” adding: because my wife got it all sorted out weeks ago…)

The reason for my smugness?  I reckon everyone in Northern Ireland has access to the perfect pressie this year, just at the click of a mouse: head to the Titanic Belfast website and buy your loved ones a ticket for the opening day of our biggest, brightest new visitor attraction.  A no-brainer, no?!

And just to whet your appetite, poking around on the site I found some really superb videos – like this construction timelapse:

Or this beautifully-made full-length trailer for the whole project:

And just in case you haven’t seen it (it’s been a while since I posted it here on The Dock blog), this brilliant fly-through of the new centre – it looks fantastic:

Earlier in the week I was was waxing lyrical (all right, ranting) about the onslaught of negative press and gloomy defeatism being lobbed at the TQ and Titanic Belfast – and lo and behold, the tide is turning!  Last night, a double-page spread in the Belfast Telegraph, complete with front-page headline, at last beating the drum of optimism and hope.

Best fact of the article: tickets were selling at the rate of one every 80 seconds on the first day (with 33,000 now sold already).  Best quote of the article: someone booking from Maine, USA wrote “The best gift ever!  Hoping to go to Belfast when we go to Killarney in March!!  Cannot believe that I will get to see where she was made!!!”

That one joyfully-exclamation-mark-filled quote gives me hope that it will work.  Susan and I were in Killarney last summer – it’s bunged, absolutely bursting with tourists, in a way we’ve never really experienced here in Belfast.  Obviously there’s never been anything which fired the imagination of people visiting places like Killarney to make the journey North – but now there is.  Killarney to Belfast probably seems like a quick hop next door to someone from Maine.  Get ready, Belfast, this is really happening…

Second bit of newspaper-related news: you might remember the wonderful Eleanor, who told me the story of her father and his role in creating Titanic’s fireplaces and woodwork.  Well, on my recent return to Larne to thank Eleanor for her story and show her the video, we were snapped for international stardom in the Larne Times.  (I was a minister in Larne for 3 years – it was my very first post – and we used to have a competition between all the ministers in the town to see who could appear in the Larne Times most often.  I have to tell you that I won, by an embarrassing margin.  And even now, they can’t get enough of me…!)

And I love their optimism about the international reach of The Dock website:

Finally, huge thanks to all those who made for a lovely, Christmassy, welcoming, chatty, festive, funny, good-news-filled Christmas Bash last night at the Arc Apartments.. I had a blast!

Tonight is The Dock’s Big Christmas Bash – call in to the pop-up shop at the base of the Arc Apartments any time after 5 for mulled wine, mince pies, fruit punch, festive goodies, Christmas music, fairy lights, a blazing fire, and of the course the chance to meet and catch up with the nicest bunch of people ever to grace the Titanic Quarter!

If you need a bit of help to find us, the Best Map Ever will help – click on the pic to the left to enlarge.

And if you want to catch up with yesterday’s Titanic-Quarter-themed Thought For The Day on BBC Radio Ulster, it’s at 1:25:25 into Good Morning Ulster – link here.

Seeya later!

Storms are brewing and we’re on Amber Alert today – in more ways than one. In a sort-of continuation of yesterday’s rant, I really believe that we’re at a critical point in Northern Ireland. Do we believe the naysayers and sink back into the rhythm of stuck in-a-rut, or are we going to take this God-given chance to build a new Northern Ireland in Titanic year?  (Follow this link to the latest news – but make sure you take the time to watch the accompanying videoclip of the interview with Mike Smyth – he’s a new Dock hero!)

All thoughts going through my head as I attended a fantastic event at the TQ campus of Belfast Met this morning: the opening of their ‘faith room’.  Now obviously I’m excited and hugely encouraged that the Met have been bold enough to include a faith room in their new campus, and it’s a gorgeous, cosy space.

But what excited me even more was to see the context in which that room exists. Faith isnt just hidden in a room in the Met; it’s woven throughout the whole ethos of the place. The staff have faith in the students. The students have faith in the future. The college authorities have faith that these extraordinary facilities will inspire extraordinary people.

And their faith is being rewarded: a few days ago I was in the Met wearing my ‘Titanic Ambassador’ hat (not an actual literal hat you understand), taking part in a Christmas Fair where students were showcasing their talent and training, from cupcake-making to T-shirt printing to dance and drama. Alan Sugar would be proud of this lot – they are dreaming big, investing and inventing, and they’re about to graduate into a Northern Ireland that should be ready for all their drive and creativity.

But is it? As the generation above, are we modelling a world where it’s good to try, where risk is encouraged, where entrepreneurs and creatives and fresh thinkers can thrive and breathe? Or are we clinging to a culture of defeatism?  I sometimes think that in Belfast we’d really rather say “I told you so” about a failure than “Wasn’t that great?” about a success.  Aren’t we sick of that kind of doom and gloom?

Jesus told a story – sometimes called the Parable of the Talents – about a fierce businessman (imagine Lord Sugar in the role if it helps…) who gives, respectively, 5, 2 and 1 ‘talents’ (about 20 years’ slave-wages) to his servants before leaving for a journey.  The industrious young apprentices who take risks, dare, take chances and double their 5 and 2 talent investments are rewarded with more; the risk-averse servant who buries his single talent gets chewed-up and spat-out in spectacular style.

Two thousand years later, Jesus still cuts to the heart of things.  Look at all the “talents” we have: those Met students, top-class graduates, our Titanic heritage, the amazing new visitor centre, movie studios, world-class industry, a beautiful country, fantastic people, the Giant’s Causeway, Whitepark Bay, the Mourne Mountains, the Peace Bridge, Victoria Square, St George’s Market… man alive!  Do I need to go on?  How can we hide?  How can we keep downcast eyes?  How can we keep talking and complaining and ‘auditing’ ourselves into inactivity?   C’mon!

Titanic Belfast was looking unbelievably stunning on our Dock Walk on Sunday – just as we set off from the Odyssey a shaft of evening sunlight pierced the low storm-clouds and glinted off the cladding of the building:

See what I did there?  I started off an article about Titanic Belfast on a positive note.  It seems to be something that’s beyond most members of the press this week.  An “interesting” weekend in the media started with reports on Friday with the attention-grabbing headline “Titanic project faces EU grant shortfall”!   (if you want to read the article it’s here but, as you’ll see, I really don’t recommend it.)  I was umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether to comment on this blog, but at speaking engagements over the last few days, the first question most people have been asking is, “So, this Titanic thing’s got a £20 million shortfall, has it?”

And the answer is, emphatically, no, as this article (which you really should read) makes clear.  Funding which can be drawn down as necessary, rather than being banked in advance, is not a shortfall, surely.  But where’s the exciting headline in that?  So, yet again, a widely-reported cheap shot has given the TQ’s armchair critics another bit of unfounded ammo.  Still, it’ll be nice to see how the media redress the balance by printing the truth, nice and loud and clear, won’t it?   …won’t it?

So just as I was starting to mutter darkly about the press and their wicked ways, grumble grumble, I turned to (of all things) the Sunday Times, usually my bastion for reasonably sane perspectives on the world, only to find a grumpy, it’ll-never-work hatchet job on Titanic Belfast.  It’s our old friend the ‘Belfast But’ again.  Even before the place is open (and certainly, judging from the article, without having visited the site recently), it’s written off without being given a chance.  It makes me very ANGRY! and I’d love, love to be able to show the writer of the article around the TQ and share why it makes me so excited.  There are good, solid reasons why most of his complaints and objections aren’t necessarily the case.  (Don’t worry, I’ll not go into them here – don’t get me started…)

The problem with the Belfast But is that it can become a self-fulfiling prophecy.  Decide on failure and you’ll make it happen.  Decide that something beautiful, visionary, unprecedented is happening and can happen in Belfast, and…

So it’s time to get to work, people of The Dock!  This is the battle of the jungle drums.  The old drumbeat of our province has been: we’re stuck, no change, it won’t work, just give up.  Time to start beating out a new rhythm: hope is here, we can change, it is happening, it’s our time…  C’mon!

And it’s up to you and me.  The people building Titanic Belfast, transforming the slipways, preparing the exhibitions, restoring the Nomadic, planning, prepping and worrying about 1001 details – they’re doing a fantastic job.  But they depend on the jungle drums of the rest of the city and the province to build the excitement and the momentum.  Are you telling all your friends and relatives that 2012 is the year they have to visit Belfast, to see our little city shine brighter than it’s ever shone before?  Are you spreading the word, talking it up?  Have you checked out the Titanic Belfast website, to luxuriate in some fantastic photography of the construction of the building – and to book your place on Day One of this new era?

Because today is when it all begins:  the tickets are now on sale.  I’ve just bought a couple for the opening day, and if you’re quick you can get some too.  (The first tour is already sold out as I write.)  Get some tickets for your family as Christmas presents – and hey, get some tickets for yourself as well.  Because this is good news, and it’s happening.

So let’s finish off with some of the good news we’ve seen reported over the past week: