Conference

Today's the day .................... to meet the Minister

Day 2 of the Conference and in the afternoon, there was a Keynote address from Ed Vaizey. He is the new Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries - the Department that will decide on the future of the country's museums and galleries.

Seeing as the MLA (Musuems, Libraries and Archives Council) is one of the bodies to be scrapped under the new coalition government, you can imagine that everyone was very keen to hear what he had to say. The auditorium was completely packed - and there was definitely a slightly hostile whiff in the air.

I have to say, however, that he did pretty well to reassure most people apart from the real hardened cynics that there was some glimmer of hope for the future. Even that some good might come out of the severe cutbacks that are inevitably going to happen in much of the sector.

By the end of his speech, even the dinosaur looked a bit less threatening ................