Our lovely media partners The Sentinel have give us our own weekly blog. A new edition wil go up every Friday on their website and will offer a behind the scenes look in to the planning and organisation of the event - warts and all! Below is the very first edition and if you click here you can get the latest update.

Welcome to the Axis Festival blog - a brief insight into the inner workings of the Axis beast. This festival is for you - our community, our city - so it's only right that you know what we are up to every week.

After months of planning, meetings, talking and negotiating, the 2008 Axis Festival has kicked into overdrive this week and there are literally not enough hours in the day to liaise with all the hundreds of people that combine to make this event a success.

I was pleased to find I'm not the only mad person answering emails at 5am on Monday, when one of our marketing team surprised me with a reply!

The week kicked off with the latest additions to the already jam-packed festival line up. As if having The Wombats headlining our Saturday slot wasn't exciting enough, I'm now delighted to announce that superstars in waiting, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong will be playing the aftershow party at The Underground as part of their national tour.

As we prepare to announce the details of this year's fringe festival, the beer drinkers in the camp were celebrating as local business, Titanic Brewery, is confirmed as the main sponsor.

Renamed The Titanic Burslem Fringe, we are looking forward to four days of folk and acoustic music events that are destined to become an annual addition. We are also giving local residents a discount for all the fringe events. For tickets, take a recent utility bill down to the Burslem School of Art.

A call from the BBC's antique expert Eric Knowles on Wednesday shows me he is just as excited about the Antiques Antics event at The Forum Theatre as we are. Apparently the Potteries is his Mecca, and "all roads lead to Stoke". So that's why the A500 is so busy!

You may have seen bits of news in The Sentinel in the last week and be itching for a full guide to what is going on.

Well, the wait is nearly over as own very own 'Mac Man', designer and fellow Axis organiser Phil Rawle, has finalised the 2008 brochure which will hit the streets shortly.

In the meantime, the super bunch at Jamiedia have redesigned our website and are preparing to launch the fully interactive version in the coming week. Keep checking our website for the latest news and features.

Well, that's just a small taste of what I have been up to this week. We hope to have more announcements over the next seven days - including the latest from our Liverpudlian headliners, The Wombats, who are currently touring in Australia.

Have a great week.

Sara Austin