The colourful large scale mural was created by local artist Jess Riley and features an A to Z of Wiganese and celebrates the spirit of Wigan, its history, people and places.
The Mural is part of a project by South East Lancashire Community Rail Partnership with funding from Avanti West Coast's Station Community Fund.
The mural has transformed the station's underpass, bringing an array of colour, stunning lettering design and brings a very warm welcome for everyone travelling to or from Wigan North Western by rail.
With the local dialect well represented, the mural also features local phrases and even local delicacies, such as the Wigan Kebab!
Most of all, the mural really captures the town's warm and friendly community and is hoped will inspire locals to look into their local heritage.
The words and phrases chosen for the piece have been selected by the local community during workshops held by organisations such as Wigan Youth Zone, on social media, alongside purpose built post boxes in local businesses enabling the whole community to take part in this project.
Jess Riley, lettering artist, has used the selected words to build the piece carefully and colourfully to capture Wigans personality whilst including its industrial and social heritage.
The mural also includes QR codes, which when scanned link to further information about the words, phrases and people represented in the artwork.
Kerry Riley, Customer Experience Manager at Avanti West Coast, said:
“We're proud to have played our part in the mural project and join local people to celebrate Wigan, as we want to champion the places and communities we serve.
“This unique artwork captures the vibrant, friendly spirit of the community – providing a warm welcome to people travelling to or from Wigan North Western by train. We're sure it will bring a smile to the faces of our customers, local community and the Avanti West Coast team for many years to come.”
Dr Steph Dermott, Community Rail Development Officer at Wigan Community Rail, said:
“It has been an amazing process to project manage and watch this mural come to life over the past few months. We hope it will give the local community great pride in their language and culture and give railway travellers a real taste of Wiganese!”
Artist, Jess Riley, said:
“Through this mural project with South East Lancashire Community Rail Partnership, we're celebrating the unique Wigan dialect, known as ‘Wiganese', and the iconic elements of our town. It has been great to work with the community to discover their favourite Wigan words, as well as other things that people love about the town, such as local landmarks of past and present, and combine these ideas in the mural itself.”
To find out more about the community art mural, visit:
https://www.southeastlancscrp.org.uk/wigan-north-western-mural/
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The murals are great, but disappointed there is nothing on the station celebrating Wigan Warriors, the most successful and famous rugby league club in the world, who this year 2022 celebrate their 150th year. I was told by someone at Avanti West Coast that something would appear on the station to recognise this.