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:

A huge welcome to one and all for one more Meet the Neighbours bash in 2011 – Thursday 15th December, call in any time from 5pm onwards to the pop-up coffeeshop at the base of the Arc Apartments.

There’ll be loads of festive goodies, steaming mugs of hot punch, Christmas music (but no ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ – guaranteed), comfy chairs, twinkly lights… and of course the chance to meet and catch up with the nicest bunch of people ever to live and work in the Titanic Quarter…

Yes here I am again, up with the birds at the crack of dawn to invade your airwaves at 6:55 and 7:55am, today and each Wednesday in December, for Radio Ulster’s Thought For The Day.

So whaddaya reckon, did I abandon all mention or reference to Titanic? As if! I would never do that to you! And so today’s ‘thought’ was about Eleanor, the fantastic lady who told me the story of her father, Ambrose Willis – the man behind Titanic’s beautiful carved wooden fireplaces and panelling. If you haven’t already seen it, you really have to check out Eleanor’s video – she’s a natural born storyteller:

Eleanor’s story really brought the Titanic to life for me; all the facts and figures I’ve learnt are transformed by the picture of Eleanor’s father returning home from work, being scolded by his wife because his clothes smelt of paint and varnish. The facts become a face. Which is a tiny little picture of the story of Christmas – a story in which the awe-inspiring, far-off fact of God’s presence in the Old Testament becomes the face of a vulnerable baby, crying in a stable.

Everything changes when the facts become a face – in bringing history to life, in building relationships between people, communities and nations – and in the realm of faith. “God is”, is a pretty huge statement to make. But “God is near”, “God is personal” – how much more amazing. And life-changing. And true.

Catchable on BBC iPlayer at 1:25:00 into Good Morning Ulster by clicking here.