\u201cArt feels different when it is close enough to breathe the same air,\u201d said school principal Claire Coy, describing the thrill of being loaned a painting from a national collection. \u201cI have visited many, many galleries and loved my experience but nothing has matched this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coy\u2019s school, the Lowry Academy in Salford, has this week been the temporary home for LS Lowry\u2019s Dwelling, Ordsall Lane, Salford<\/a>, painted in 1927. It is the first time Tate has lent to a school and even though it has been for only two days, the benefits have been enormous, teachers and curators say.<\/p>\n Pupils at the Lowry Academy in Salford looking at Dwelling, Ordsall Lane, Salford, which is on display at the school to mark the 50th anniversary of the artist\u2019s death. Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The artwork shows a crowd of children on the corner of a bustling residential road and shines light on Lowry\u2019s belief that \u201ca street is not a street without people\u201d.<\/p>\n Its physical presence has had a hugely positive ripple effect at the school, teachers said. It has spurred a number of art, history and English literature projects and led to careers workshops that may have set children on paths they had not thought about previously.<\/p>\n On Friday, children were finishing their designs and paintings for a large Lowry-inspired collage that will, when completed, be varnished and displayed at the 900-pupil school in Worsley.<\/p>\n The loan has come after months of detailed planning, discussions about security and checking of CCTV camera angles. \u201cIt takes a lot of work. This is not run-of-the-mill museum work for us,\u201d said Helen Legg, the director of Tate Liverpool<\/a>.<\/p>\n Legg, like all museum bosses, knows only too well that many children have never been to an art gallery and it has probably never occurred to them that they could enjoy going.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want young people to come to our museums,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are their museums. But sometimes you need to make that invitation really explicit and that is what this is about.\u201d<\/p>\n The presence of the painting at the school has spurred art, history and English literature projects. Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Heather Sturdy, the head of national partnerships at Tate, said that if having a real painting in a room used for assemblies encourages just one child to visit a gallery or think about a career in the arts, then it will have been a success.<\/p>\n \u201cThis project has been very buoying,\u201d she said. \u201cThis must be how someone who owns a great painting \u2013 has it in their home \u2013 feels.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the year 7 schoolchildren the Guardian spoke to on Friday, only one had been to an art gallery \u2013 Tate Liverpool, he said, to the surprise and disbelief of his friends. All of them had heard of Lowry \u2013 mercifully, since their school is named after him \u2013 and they said they were fans of his work.<\/p>\n Their art teacher, Jason Osman, said his pupils would know a Picasso or Leonardo da Vinci, although perhaps not a Tracey Emin. \u201cThis has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is such a great experience for the students, for the whole school actually.<\/p>\n \u201cI did a poll of who had been to an art gallery and it was a very, very low number. To be able to see a painting up close, not on a screen, makes a massive difference. Some have been a bit scared of getting too close to it. A lot of the students have said \u2018is that a real painting?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n All national museums are thinking about how they can make their collections more accessible, more inspiring. The National Gallery has led the way on lending artworks to more surprising places including, in 2019, when it staged a nationwide tour of a self-portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi. Among the venues for the painting was a high school in Newcastle, a women\u2019s prison in Surrey<\/a> and a library in Walthamstow.<\/p>\n Tate says it is one of the world\u2019s biggest lenders of art with more than 4.5 million people seeing a Tate work on loan last year.<\/p>\n