Trusts and Foundations
Charitable Trusts & Foundations play a vital role in the life of The Lowry and support our core work and specific projects. Partnerships with Trusts & Foundations enable The Lowry to continue delivering high quality engagement projects, commission new work and extend our ongoing community, education and outreach programme.
Recent case studies include:
Digit
Funded by v the national young people’s volunteering organisation.
The Lowry delivered a large scale volunteer project inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as part of the mygames programme powered by v. Digit saw The Lowry lead on a 3-day Salford Digital Arts Festival in June 2011 organised and delivered by hundreds of young volunteers aged 16-24. The project was highly rewarding for the participants involved and provided an introduction to the arts and volunteering for many new young people.
Key outcomes from Digit were the friendships formed during the project between the young people and the lasting legacy that the values of this project will have for them in their futures. The new opportunities enabled by funding from v allowed The Lowry to devote resources and expertise towards further developing the organisation’s relationships with young people and the local community in Salford.
'Just wanted to email and say really enjoyed stewarding at DIGITFEST over the weekend. Was great to meet new people and see some amazing shows. Also, just to let you know I would be interested in helping out again if any other projects occur.'
Jen Clarke, Volunteer Steward Lead Volunteers organising Digit 2011
Schools Workshops Programme
Supported by Crabtree North West Charitable Trust
The Lowry’s community and education programme is extensive and recognised regionally as one of the most diverse and innovative of its kind. The Lowry’s School Workshops Programme continues to be the core component of the formal education output and provides children and young people with their first point of entry into the arts.
The Crabtree North West Charitable Trust continues to support this important work on an annual basis and has helped to maintain and increase the provision of school workshop activity since 2008. Over the past year this has included:
• Delivering over 275 workshops.
• The continuation of subsidies for all Salford schools.
• Continued targeted marketing activity for recruitment of schools in more deprived areas.
The programme continues to contribute towards students’ wellbeing with feedback often commenting on the increased levels of students’ confidence following attendance and participation in Lowry workshops.
Transformations
Supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Transformations was a commissioning project to create a series of three major site-specific exhibitions for The Lowry’s Promenade Gallery. The commissions were targeted at mid-career artists and due to the unique architectural qualities of The Promenade Gallery, artists were challenged to develop new approaches to their work, transforming the Gallery space. Each of the commissions provided significant financial support for the artists’ research, development and production as well as substantial technical and curatorial support from staff at The Lowry.
The commissioning fund supported three new exhibitions to be developed by three artists during 2007-2010.
1. 2007-08 Grennan & Sperandio: Giant Psychic Avatars of Salford
2. 2008-09 Sarah Staton: A Clump of Plinths
3. 2009-10 Leo Fitzmaurice: Panoramia
The project also supported an internship position allowing for invaluable curatorial experience to be gained by early career arts practitioners who all went on to secure full time employment in the sector.
"I feel that this commission has given me a chance to show what I can do on a large scale working with a team. I already have a number of ideas in this direction that I will be pursuing. It will be easier to get these off the ground because of what I have achieved here."
Leo Fitzmaurice upon completion of the project
"The internship has a specific curatorial focus which is unusual for gallery work experience but was invaluable for my career development. Having studied contemporary Curating at postgraduate level it was useful to gain work experience that was specifically in that field. Internships like this one give people wishing to work in this field the opportunity to gain invaluable curatorial experience."
Emily Tan Transformations 3 Curatorial Intern.
Unlocking Salford Quays
The Unlocking Salford Quays heritage project helped local people explore, record and share their own stories of The Quays as part of The Lowry’s tenth anniversary celebrations. For more information on this large scale engagement project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund please see the USQ website here.