Latest news with #GoingtotheMatch
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sophie Willan and Bolton Wanderers at centre of Lowry 360 experience
As part of its 25th anniversary celebrations, The Lowry is staging a free, immersive experience based on L S Lowry's painting Going to the Match. Developed with world-renowned creative studio Layers of Reality, Lowry 360 surrounds audiences with the sights and sounds of Going to the Match, transporting them into the painting before they can experience the original painting firsthand. Visitors enjoying the Lowry 360 experience (Picture: Michael Pollard)Going to the Match painted in 1953, is arguably one of Lowry's best known works and depicts crowds heading to Bolton Wanderers Burnden Park. The six-minute audio-visual experience uses super-high resolution animation and features an evocative narration from Bolton's BAFTA-winning writer and performer Sophie Willan. Sophie, who created and stars in the TV comedy series Alma's Not Normal, was supported by the Lowry's Artist Development Programme early in her career. Julia Fawcett, Chief Executive of Lowry said: 'The reaction to Lowry 360 since it was launched has been wonderful, with visitors responding with real emotion and joy to the experience of being transported into Going to the Match and then being able to view the real painting afterwards. 'This is one of the most ambitious and exciting projects we have ever undertaken. 'Working in partnership with the brilliant Layers of Reality we have transformed our gallery space, bringing to life an unforgettable experience that we hope will encourage new audiences to discover L S. Lowry's jobs" target="_blank">work as well as delighting those already familiar with our collection. L S Lowry's Going to the Match on display (Picture: Michael Pollard)'When we acquired Going to the Match in 2022, our goal was to keep it on public view and free to access. Now, through this immersive experience, we can share this remarkable and iconic painting with even more people. 'And to open up the arts to as many people as possible, we're making this experience completely free - a special gift to audiences in our 25th year, ensuring everyone can take part and be inspired.' The 25th anniversary programme features world-class shows and exhibitions to fill the Salford venue's theatres and galleries including a free exhibition of Quentin Blake's illustrations, featuring his most beloved characters and the regional premiere of James Graham's Olivier Award winning play, Dear England which opens on May 29. Although Lowry 360 and the Quentin Blake exhibition are free, booking a slot is recommended. For details visit
BBC News
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Lowry exhibit lets people walk through Going to the Match painting
An art gallery that bought L. S. Lowry's iconic Going to the Match painting for £7.8m is letting visitors experience the artwork in a new immersive is part of displays to mark 25 years since the opening of Salford arts venue The Lowry in executive Julia Fawcett says the projection, which opens for free on Saturday, allows visitors to see "the little details" they had not noticed says the artwork, painted in 1953, resonates with "people who love football, who love the idea of crowds coming together and enjoying that sense of community". Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Manchester United's stadium plans: put the fans first
Visitors to Salford's Lowry art gallery this summer will be able to enjoy a new take on one of the greatest paintings about sport. Depicting thousands of supporters bent purposefully towards a 1950s football stadium, LS Lowry's Going to the Match has become part of the iconography of the national game. As part of its silver jubilee celebrations, the gallery is staging an immersive experience of the painting, including a nostalgic soundtrack evoking the sounds of a lost world. So much for the past. Barely a mile away from the Lowry, at Manchester United's Old Trafford base, it is the ghosts of football's future that are being summoned up. To great fanfare, this month the club unveiled computer-generated images of Lowryesque hordes approaching the new £2bn stadium it hopes to build by 2030. Accommodating 100,000 fans, and topped by three spires that will allegedly be visible from Liverpool, 'New Trafford' is set to be the biggest and costliest football arena in Britain. Somewhat improbably, United's co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has suggested that the stadium and its vast surrounding leisure campus could become a global draw on a par with the Eiffel Tower. A project so gargantuan will undoubtedly be a catalyst for welcome economic growth in the wider Trafford area. The club is anticipating that substantial public funding can be unlocked to transform the stadium's post-industrial hinterland. Enthusiastic noises from the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, suggest that a substantial amount of cash may be forthcoming. But there is already criticism that the scheme could boost a billionaire tax exile's business at taxpayers' expense. The 2012 London Olympics demonstrated what sporting-led regeneration projects can achieve. But Manchester United supporters' organisations, with good reason, are ambivalent about this brave new world. In the same week the initial stadium design was revealed, Sir Jim told interviewers that Britain's biggest football club had been at risk of going bust by Christmas. This was alarmist talk to justify deeply unpopular ticket price rises and internal cost-cutting. But the club owes more than £700m, largely thanks to the leveraged takeover by the US Glazer family 20 years ago, which piled a mountain of debt on to a previously debt-free institution. Funding one of the most expensive stadiums in world sport will ratchet up the financial pressure still further, and investors will demand handsome returns. The grim likelihood is that, one way or another, ordinary supporters end up footing the bill. Well-versed in the monetising ways of modern football, an already disillusioned fanbase will treat the club's pledges of ticket affordability with understandable scepticism. Ultimately, of course, the success of 'New Trafford' will depend on what happens on the field of play. In a caustic assessment of the plans, the Manchester MP Graham Stringer recalled a visit in the 1960s to Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough ground, which had been recently modernised. As the home team trailed, a disgruntled local commented acidly that he was 'still waiting for the bloody cantilever stand to score a goal'. In an age when elite football regularly shows signs of losing touch with the soul of the game, that nugget of northern wisdom offers a salutary reminder of core sporting priorities. As they dream of a 'Wembley of the north', while the men's team continues to flounder on the pitch, the Glazers and Sir Jim should not lose sight of them.
BBC News
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
L. S. Lowry: Chance to walk inside celebrated 'Going to the Match' work
People will have the chance to step inside L. S. Lowry's iconic Going to the Match painting as part of a new immersive exhibition.A 360-degree display of the celebrated 1953 artwork, which depicts fans arriving at a football ground, has been commissioned as part of the 25th anniversary of Salford arts venue the £106m waterfront theatre and gallery first opened in 2000 and has become one of the most visited attractions in Manchester, said Lowry chief executive Julia Fawcett. It was also the "cultural heart of one of Europe's most successful regeneration projects", she said. Part of the venue has been transformed by creative studio Layers of Reality to surround gallery goers with "the sights and sounds of Going to the Match", a Lowry spokesperson said. The oil canvas painting of spectators heading to watch Bolton Wanderers at the team's then-home ground Burnden Park was bought by the gallery for £7.8m in 2022. Ms Fawcett said the purchase was aimed at keeping the work on public view and free to access. "Now, through this immersive experience, we can share this remarkable and iconic painting with even more people," she said. The free exhibition will open on 3 May, and is one among many events planned to celebrate the Lowry's 25th anniversary. Among the others is a show by Not Too Tame Theatre titled Gods of Salford, a production "reimagining Greek myths through the lens of Salford's working-class spirit", a venue spokesperson programme also features a free exhibition of Quentin Blake's illustrations, including famous creations including the BFG and Matilda, as well as a portrait of L.S. Lowry drawn by Blake. A new production of the play Dear England, a mural, lectures series, and other events have also been planned. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
