Salford Everywhere

Celebrating a city's centenary is about more than looking back. It's an opportunity to recognise the people who have shaped its identity and imagine what comes next.

For Salford Everywhere, the ambition was to create a public artwork that placed local communities firmly in the spotlight. Rather than focusing on famous faces or historic landmarks, the project celebrated everyday Salfordians, transforming individual portraits into a powerful collective expression of the city's identity.

The creative concept required large-scale outdoor projection mapping across two very different buildings: the Maxwell Building at the University of Salford and Salford Shopping Centre in Pendleton. Each location presented its own architectural characteristics, viewing considerations and technical challenges. The projection needed to work at an extraordinary scale while retaining the clarity and visual impact of the individual portraits. For our team, the challenge was to translate an ambitious artistic concept into a technically achievable projection experience, ensuring the technology enhanced the creative vision without distracting from the people at its heart.

Working closely with From The Other, our Graymatter Video specialists provided the technical production and projection mapping expertise needed to bring Salford Everywhere to life. The project transformed two familiar urban landmarks into monumental public artworks, using large-scale architectural projection mapping to showcase the faces of 1,553 Salfordians from more than 150 community groups.

Delivering projections of this scale across two distinct buildings required careful technical planning, high-brightness projection technology and precise video control to ensure the portraits retained their clarity and visual impact. To achieve this, our team deployed a combination of Panasonic PT-RZ31K 30,000-lumen and PT-RQ35K 4K laser projectors, delivering the brightness and image quality required to bring the artwork to life across the city's architecture. These were paired with specialist Panasonic projection lenses to accommodate the unique characteristics of each location.

Behind the scenes, disguise media servers provided the content playback capabilities, supported by our specialist video distribution infrastructure. Together, these technologies enabled the delivery of large-format visual content across the architectural projection surfaces.

Our role was to bridge the gap between creative ambition and technical execution, ensuring Matthew Rosier's artistic vision could be realised at scale while maintaining the integrity of the original content. For iMAG and Graymatter Video, this is what makes projection mapping so exciting. It's not simply about making buildings look different. It's about using technology to give creative ideas the scale, visibility and impact they deserve.

The Result

Across two evenings, Salford Everywhere transformed the city's architecture into a powerful celebration of community, identity and belonging. With portraits reaching up to 75 metres high, the large-scale projection mapping installation gave 1,553 Salfordians from more than 150 community groups an extraordinary platform to be seen and celebrated.

But the real impact went far beyond the scale of the projections. At the University of Salford's Maxwell Building, audiences gathered in Peel Park to experience the 45-minute visual spectacle, accompanied by an original musical score and live performances. As familiar faces appeared across the building, the atmosphere shifted between excitement, laughter, cheers and moments of genuine emotion. In reviews, critics described an audience visibly moved by the experience, with people singing, dancing and celebrating as they recognised friends, family members and neighbours projected onto the city's skyline.

Meanwhile, the silent projection at Salford Shopping Centre in Pendleton offered a different experience, allowing passers-by to encounter the artwork against the familiar sounds and rhythms of everyday city life. Together, the two installations demonstrated how architectural projection mapping can do more than transform public spaces. It can create moments of shared recognition, strengthen connections between communities and give people a renewed sense of pride in where they live.

For us, Salford Everywhere was a powerful reminder that the most memorable visual experiences aren't necessarily defined by technology alone, but by the emotions they inspire. Working alongside From The Other, we were proud to help deliver a project that placed the people of Salford centre stage, celebrating not just 100 years of city status, but the communities that continue to shape its future.