A passing remark sparked a triumph of collaboration by Bolton Arena Sports Village’s marketing partner Cornerstone Design and Marketing.
Cornerstone is a full-service agency, which provides an array of integrated services that include marketing research and strategy, re-branding, public relations, web development, digital marketing, social media marketing, videography, design and large format printing and signage.
Here’s the story of how a 78ft (24m) mural depicting the history of Horwich came to adorn the walls of the marketing suite here at the Arena, thanks to that passing comment and the coming together of various elements of Cornerstone’s full-service mix.
“Our aim was to do something unique to elevate our conferencing facilities to the next level,” explains Lee Wood, Head of Commercial at Bolton Arena Sports Village. “When the conferencing space is opened up, it provides a 78ft wall that we felt could be turned into something distinctive and engaging.”
It was that sentiment, shared with Cornerstone’s print room manager, Sam Casey, that proved to be the catalyst for the epic mural.
Cornerstone’s fingerprint is all over the Arena, from the branding, the signage and even this website, so when Lee told Sam about a history project the arena was involved in with Bolton School, the die was cast.
The project by a collection of sixth form girls at the school, which itself dates back to 1516, was chronicling almost 800 years of Horwich history.
The idea was to create a timeline spanning the first documented settlement of ‘Horewic’ in 1221 up until the construction of the arena and its role in the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
Sam returned to Cornerstone’s HQ in Oldham and enlisted the help and advice of Chris from the agency’s design team, who leads on all design work for the arena. And so the story began its next chapter.
Horwich through the ages
Using striking graphics, photographs and captions, the mural charts the 1221 settlement, the establishment of the Blundell Arms in 1715, and the establishment of Horwich bleach works in 1780.
It features a large section on the establishment and success of the Horwich Loco Works and the Railway Mechanics Institute (RMI) in the late 1800s, the latter giving its name to a successful non-league football team and the renowned Horwich RMI Harriers founded in 1924 and still going today based at the arena.
The early 20th century section tells of the toll on Bolton soldiers fighting at the Battle of Festubert in 1915, the first planned night attack of the World War One, in which more than 20,000 men were killed. On a happier note, the opening of Lever Park in 1904 is featured.
The opening of the De Havilland Propeller factory in 1937 features prominently; the factory providing much needed jobs at the time as fears of war later materialised and women went to work to replace the men fighting at the front.
And there’s a place for the Winter Hill TV transmitter, that first came into service on 3rd of May 1956.
The building of the Reebok Stadium in 1997, which replaced Bolton Wanderers’ Burnden Park ground, and the construction of the Bolton Arena four years later, finish off the timeline.
Lee Wood: “Horwich has some great history, something we thought it would be important to showcase, so I contacted the Bolton Historical Association and the idea of having Bolton School students support the project evolved from there. They’ve done a fantastic piece of work to pull it all together, as has Sam and the team at Cornerstone.”
Presenting history in a colourful and distinctive manner
We often describe our design team as Cornerstone’s creative hub, and Chris’ work for Bolton Arena Sports Village is evident in every aspect of its branding. He takes up the mural story…
“Having worked on developing the Bolton Arena Sports Village brand I wanted to create something different and bespoke but still fitting with the Arena’s branding.
“The first thing that struck me was the scale of the timeline and the fact it had to fit across three walls. Using the information provided by the Arena, I had to consider how the information and imagery would work best together – and where to position it on each wall so the story would be easy to follow.
“My design mixed historic photographs from the area and then illustrations that we created from picking out aspects of the information from the students. This gave us a variety of elements to work with and meant there was always something different to catch the eye.
“A big challenge was that some of the imagery couldn’t be enlarged too much as the quality would suffer, so we tested a several images with Sam in our print room to see how they’d print so we could be confident about maximum sizes.
“Illustrations such as the Arena, Bolton Wanderers’ football ground, the Winter Hill Transmitter, a steam train from the Horwich Loco Works, and many others all came together in between the pockets of historical information to make a great piece of work, especially when you can see it all in full.
“I’m really proud of the final result as it presents the history of the area in such a colourful and distinctive manner.”
Painstaking production perfection
The versatility of wide format vinyl printing makes it ideal for large-scale projects, such as banners, posters, and wall wraps, and we used WW300 vinyl with a matching laminate for this particular job.
The mural took almost two days to manufacture, requiring roughly 20 hours of printing time on our Mimaki CJV330-160 printer. The finished product is made up of 25 pieces of vinyl each one 2.5m (8ft) high, that took more than 10 hours to install following a prerequisite site survey earlier in the project.
Our perfectionist production crew has a wealth of industry experience, both in manufacturing and installation, but such was the scale of the mural it took Sam and his print room colleague, Steve Gill, 10 hours to piece together the artwork.
Sam says: “We’ve done jobs of all shapes and sizes, and this was definitely one of the bigger ones. The printing and fitting had to be very precise over such a large area but I’m glad to say the whole thing went together very well in the end.”
‘An amazing project to be part of’
Melissa Wright, who is secretary of the Bolton Historical Association and a teacher at Bolton School, was the person first contacted by Lee to instigate the project.
She says: “This has been an amazing project to be part of. The girls have had the opportunity not only to develop their skills in historical research, they have also gained a more rich and vibrant understanding of our local history and indeed its links to Bolton School Foundation’s long historical links to Lord Leverhulme. It really has been a wonderful learning experience for them.”
Eliza Denson, one of the students who worked on the project, adds: “We were really excited to see our research come to life and being transformed into such a visually striking timeline that will be seen by hundreds of visitors to the arena. That is really rewarding!”
PR and digital: the final pieces of the jigsaw
With the mural installed and resplendent in the conferencing suite, it was time for Cornerstone’s PR team to get involved to ensure the collaboration between the Arena and Bolton School received the recognition it deserved – for all parties involved.
Our press release for local media garnered earned coverage from the Bolton News website under the headline Bolton School students create Horwich history mural – the site attracting an overall audience reach in the region of 300,0001 per month.
Rightly proud of our role in this success story, we’ve shared the news – Cornerstone brings local students’ 78ft historical mural to Bolton Arena – with our peers in the world of agencies and media via the Prolific North website, which enjoys more than 92,000 visits per month2.
And as members of the GM Chamber of Commerce, the news is featured on that website too – Students’ Horwich-through-the-ages project transformed into giant mural by Cornerstone DM.
Get in touch, keep in touch
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