Glad he did, Lionel is great but more of a text based Artist. I think the main things to consider, is the size of the wall being painted and just how big/small some of those details will have to be.
It's a lot of detail to fit onto a not huge wall amd when you look at Katie's work, the most successful stuff (aesthetically) is a object with quite a minimal background.
It's great that though club are embracing the project. Did Katie have much input with the design ?
Do we know if it’s being put on aonething to be placed on the wall . what happens when the club shop is knocked down for a multi story version when we’re back in the Prem ?
Do we know if it’s being put on aonething to be placed on the wall . what happens when the club shop is knocked down for a multi story version when we’re back in the Prem ?
I think itl need a re paint within 20 years, itl be fine 🤣
I would like to see a lot of detailed references large or small lin any mural. Including in no particular order:
The clean up morning. The fund raising. The town hall announcement. Voice of the Valley The Mercury The election campaign. Fans painting the railings. Fans visiting the site and gazing wistfully at the development happening. The Bromley Bus The Robin Hat Rogeralwengate. The crying man pictured in the Guardian The refurbished ground The balloons Curbs, GRITTY, players and action. Some reference to Portsmouth Some action from the game. Fans looking like the fans at the time.
I am pretty sure others can add a suggestion or two.
Sorry but I can’t help thinking that a good artist could do a better job. The suggestion is as classless and thoughtless as a Keohane dried up mouldy cheese sandwich.
Or I would go along with the suggestion from @bobmunro to have a giant date (the date) painted on the wall.
I was fully engaged with it all at the time, and believe me that like many other great fans we put our heart and soul into getting back, it was all consuming, it was visceral and it was overwhelmingly almost unbearably emotional.
Glad he did, Lionel is great but more of a text based Artist. I think the main things to consider, is the size of the wall being painted and just how big/small some of those details will have to be.
It's a lot of detail to fit onto a not huge wall amd when you look at Katie's work, the most successful stuff (aesthetically) is a object with quite a minimal background.
It's great that though club are embracing the project. Did Katie have much input with the design ?
.
Disagree about Stanhope being more of a text based artist.
A lot of his recent railway is text lead but his other murals, such as Ian Wright, aren't.
But he wasn't up for it so it's a moot point.
My input would be to make the mural an open two pages of VOTV or the Mercury.
In that way you avoid one problem of the current image which is the who mural having to be from the same perspective ie looking as if everyone is coming through the gates Roger Alwen has just opened.
Using a double page spread means you can have the Alwen gate image on the left and then Gwen King and her Robin hat, plus balloons and players entering the pitch, headphones Norm Barker, etc on the right.
It also allows the text part of the magazine/paper to become the description of the images/event.
Glad he did, Lionel is great but more of a text based Artist. I think the main things to consider, is the size of the wall being painted and just how big/small some of those details will have to be.
It's a lot of detail to fit onto a not huge wall amd when you look at Katie's work, the most successful stuff (aesthetically) is a object with quite a minimal background.
It's great that though club are embracing the project. Did Katie have much input with the design ?
.
Disagree about Stanhope being more of a text based artist.
A lot of his recent railway is text lead but his other murals, such as Ian Wright, aren't.
But he wasn't up for it so it's a moot point.
My input would be to make the mural an open two pages of VOTV or the Mercury.
In that way you avoid one problem of the current image which is the who mural having to be from the same perspective ie looking as if everyone is coming through the gates Roger Alwen has just opened.
Using a double page spread means you can have the Alwen gate image on the left and then Gwen King and her Robin hat, plus balloons and players entering the pitch, headphones Norm Barker, etc on the right.
It also allows the text part of the magazine/paper to become the description of the images/event.
But a lot of the clutter needs to go.
Fair point about the Ian Wright piece, either way he thought others would do it better, which is good.
The wall really needs to be bigger if you want more details, like the house at the top of Floyd road, or the property that has the old mural on
It was an emotive day like no other. Fair play to anybody putting themselves and their reputations in the firing line for producing this but the end result needs to reflect that and pressing that button will seem like it’s blown the world up if you get it wrong.
there also needs to be some narrative on the wall to explain the circumstances that caused the exile and how we got to that incredible day. Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it and not everyone there that day is still alive with the number still living and attending games decreasing further as every year passes. Its ‘our’ chance to to say to the world this is who we are, this is what was achieved in adversity and as such its also a message for fans of every other club and people in all walks of life to never give up. It might be controversial but a link to the thread on this forum that covered everyone’s memories of that day would be good imo.
Just returning now to apologise...I should have turned it in a lot earlier than I did last night. I'm not directly involved in this project, btw. My stake in it is no more or less than @Covered End, @bobmunro and others. But the responses did trigger in me some memories of bad days in the ad agency.
@Covered End is right to point out that the process should probably have involved some kind of wider testing with a group of fans before presenting it in what looks like a final stage "give us the money and we'll do it".
Skimming through the responses since then, I think @aliwibble raises key questions. What's it celebrating exactly - what message does it wish to convey, what emotional response? And very importantly, in whom? Who is what the comms industry calls the key/ core target audience? Many of the responses on the thread come from people who were there on the day, some of whom may have put in a lot of prior effort to help get us there. Covered End and I are in that group, and we have strong feelings about the day. We are not the core target audience, though, as I understand it. We've got our own collections of memorabilia and don't need to be told how important it was in the history of our club. I think the overall objective of this thing is to help cement the legendary nature of the return in the minds of "younger" fans (and its sobering to reflect that target group may now include some Dads bringing their kids for the first time). In the ad world, those are considerations behind the "brief".
I woke up too with the uncomfortable thought that back in the day when we presented the first sketches of the Valley Party posters to a meeting of about 60 of the VP volunteers, the response was far more positive than we see here, so clearly whatever the rights and wrongs of individual points, overall the proposal isn't "right". But in the VP case, some of the best planners in the advertising world had straightened out our thinking about the message and the target audience, and we'd had that internal discussion in the VP activist group before the first proposals were ready. People sort of knew what to expect. In hindsight perhaps CAST should have tried to assemble a focus group comprised only of fans from the target demographic before releasing an advanced concrete proposal on here.
why the short timescale? Asking for funds now so it can be completed and unveiled in October. Surely awareness of this should have been raised months ago.
The mural is a good idea, but there needs to be much greater clarity about what the mural is to represent. The text in the article states, "a permanent representation of the momentous day". I think this is the right approach, but for me the mock-mural looks like a mish-mash of stuff, much of which was important to getting us to that point, some of which seems to be after the event. Those things aren't actually about 'the day'. For me the central theme should be that something very important happened at The Valley that day. That important something wasn't that a lady wore a funny hat, or that some balloons got released, or that an imaginary hand waved a now essentially-defunct newspaper in the air. The very important thing that happened was that a football match that played. For the first time in seven years Charlton Athletic played a home match at their real home rather than at rented digs. And that's what's missing completely from this picture. The only football reference in that picture is a tiny glimpse of Sam Bartram, some 40 years previous to the event. How can you have a mural to commemorate that day without actually depicting the football? We already have a mural of sorts that to my mind represents the day far better and does so using just a few characters; that is the banner at the back of the North Stand that proclaims 'Walsh 3:07'.
I don't want to come across as entirely negative because, I think it's a good idea and the people behind it have the club and its history at heart. So thanks to CAST and the BTTV30 Committee for promoting the idea and to sammy391 for your explanations here. It may be a painful experience getting such a lot of negative feedback, but I'm hopeful that you'll be able to use it to produce something that you can all be really proud of. For the record, I would be happy to contribute to a mural but I'm sorry to say not this one.
Glad he did, Lionel is great but more of a text based Artist. I think the main things to consider, is the size of the wall being painted and just how big/small some of those details will have to be.
It's a lot of detail to fit onto a not huge wall amd when you look at Katie's work, the most successful stuff (aesthetically) is a object with quite a minimal background.
It's great that though club are embracing the project. Did Katie have much input with the design ?
.
Disagree about Stanhope being more of a text based artist.
A lot of his recent railway is text lead but his other murals, such as Ian Wright, aren't.
But he wasn't up for it so it's a moot point.
My input would be to make the mural an open two pages of VOTV or the Mercury.
In that way you avoid one problem of the current image which is the who mural having to be from the same perspective ie looking as if everyone is coming through the gates Roger Alwen has just opened.
Using a double page spread means you can have the Alwen gate image on the left and then Gwen King and her Robin hat, plus balloons and players entering the pitch, headphones Norm Barker, etc on the right.
It also allows the text part of the magazine/paper to become the description of the images/event.
But a lot of the clutter needs to go.
not saying this is exactly what you are suggesting but I'm not a fan of depicting certain actual fans in a mural like this even if they are recognisable to most fans, as say Norm is. The day was about all of us, it should be about all of us. No problem showing Roger opening the gates as that is an iconic image and it would be weird if he were faceless but any others depicted should just be a generic cross section of our report.
The idea is great and I will be happy to contribute once a suitable design has been agreed upon.
why am I not surprised to read that the gates project didn't get off the ground because Burger Boy was involved. Is that something that could be revived?
The mural is a good idea, but there needs to be much greater clarity about what the mural is to represent. The text in the article states, "a permanent representation of the momentous day". I think this is the right approach, but for me the mock-mural looks like a mish-mash of stuff, much of which was important to getting us to that point, some of which seems to be after the event. Those things aren't actually about 'the day'. For me the central theme should be that something very important happened at The Valley that day. That important something wasn't that a lady wore a funny hat, or that some balloons got released, or that an imaginary hand waved a now essentially-defunct newspaper in the air. The very important thing that happened was that a football match that played. For the first time in seven years Charlton Athletic played a home match at their real home rather than at rented digs. And that's what's missing completely from this picture. The only football reference in that picture is a tiny glimpse of Sam Bartram, some 40 years previous to the event. How can you have a mural to commemorate that day without actually depicting the football? We already have a mural of sorts that to my mind represents the day far better and does so using just a few characters; that is the banner at the back of the North Stand that proclaims 'Walsh 3:07'.
I don't want to come across as entirely negative because, I think it's a good idea and the people behind it have the club and its history at heart. So thanks to CAST and the BTTV30 Committee for promoting the idea and to sammy391 for your explanations here. It may be a painful experience getting such a lot of negative feedback, but I'm hopeful that you'll be able to use it to produce something that you can all be really proud of. For the record, I would be happy to contribute to a mural but I'm sorry to say not this one.
That's where I am - and I'd gladly pay for it all if it was something that captured the importance of that one day. Knowing what came before it is important, knowing what followed is important, but that's not for this mural in my opinion.
I would also add, for the avoidance of doubt, that I 100% agree with marking that special day with a mural and fully support CAST and the Committee in what they are trying to achieve. But the feedback has to be taken on board, in a constructive way, without trenches being dug. We all want the same thing.
To me, nothing is more iconic from that era, than Colin Walshes first goal back home. I'd have thought that a portrait of him taking that shot would have looked great. If you try and convey too much stuff it ends up being a bit ideas soup.
To me, nothing is more iconic from that era, than Colin Walshes first goal back home. I'd have thought that a portrait of him taking that shot would have looked great. If you try and convey too much stuff it ends up being a bit ideas soup.
I can understand why they wouldn't want to show Walsh and the players though, if the mural is more about the spectators and those who helped get us back.
If it's failed, it's because it hasn't captured that feeling of euphoria at being back.
I can understand why they wouldn't want to show Walsh and the players though, if the mural is more about the spectators and those who helped get us back.
If it's failed, it's because it hasn't captured that feeling of euphoria at being back.
That's fair enough, tricky thing is though, only a handful of people would have any clue who any of the people are now days from umages, let alone 20 years time from now
Be great if the names were Included some how, but where do you drawn the line of the BTTV role call.
It's tricky to please all, glad I'm not the one having to do so !
I was born in 1994, but BTTV means an incredible amount to me. Given the people who make up my own personal footballing tapestry were so heavily involved, it was always going to. And there are a few themes, I guess, that always come up in the Back To The Valley story whenever chatting about it:
- The goal (obviously) - The cheer that went up in the town hall and all the celebrations that evening - The campaign posters - The balloons - Roger Alwen opening the gates
That's five things that tend to come up time and time again. It would be VERY difficult for a mural to capture all of these things at once, though. I wonder if a mural itself even is the best option? Or if several panels would be better?
To me, nothing is more iconic from that era, than Colin Walshes first goal back home. I'd have thought that a portrait of him taking that shot would have looked great. If you try and convey too much stuff it ends up being a bit ideas soup.
Yes that was one of my 2 suggestions and possibly the best & simplest.
Comments
It's a lot of detail to fit onto a not huge wall amd when you look at Katie's work, the most successful stuff (aesthetically) is a object with quite a minimal background.
It's great that though club are embracing the project. Did Katie have much input with the design ?
what happens when the club shop is knocked down for a multi story version when we’re back in the Prem ?
Including in no particular order:
The clean up morning.
The fund raising.
The town hall announcement.
Voice of the Valley
The Mercury
The election campaign.
Fans painting the railings.
Fans visiting the site and gazing wistfully at the development happening.
The Bromley Bus
The Robin Hat
Rogeralwengate.
The crying man pictured in the Guardian
The refurbished ground
The balloons
Curbs, GRITTY, players and action.
Some reference to Portsmouth
Some action from the game.
Fans looking like the fans at the time.
I am pretty sure others can add a suggestion or two.
Sorry but I can’t help thinking that a good artist could do a better job. The suggestion is as classless and thoughtless as a Keohane dried up mouldy cheese sandwich.
Or I would go along with the suggestion from @bobmunro to have a giant date (the date) painted on the wall.
I was fully engaged with it all at the time, and believe me that like many other great fans we put our heart and soul into getting back, it was all consuming, it was visceral and it was overwhelmingly almost unbearably emotional.
A lot of his recent railway is text lead but his other murals, such as Ian Wright, aren't.
But he wasn't up for it so it's a moot point.
My input would be to make the mural an open two pages of VOTV or the Mercury.
In that way you avoid one problem of the current image which is the who mural having to be from the same perspective ie looking as if everyone is coming through the gates Roger Alwen has just opened.
Using a double page spread means you can have the Alwen gate image on the left and then Gwen King and her Robin hat, plus balloons and players entering the pitch, headphones Norm Barker, etc on the right.
It also allows the text part of the magazine/paper to become the description of the images/event.
But a lot of the clutter needs to go.
The wall really needs to be bigger if you want more details, like the house at the top of Floyd road, or the property that has the old mural on
there also needs to be some narrative on the wall to explain the circumstances that caused the exile and how we got to that incredible day. Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it and not everyone there that day is still alive with the number still living and attending games decreasing further as every year passes. Its ‘our’ chance to to say to the world this is who we are, this is what was achieved in adversity and as such its also a message for fans of every other club and people in all walks of life to never give up. It might be controversial but a link to the thread on this forum that covered everyone’s memories of that day would be good imo.
Just returning now to apologise...I should have turned it in a lot earlier than I did last night. I'm not directly involved in this project, btw. My stake in it is no more or less than @Covered End, @bobmunro and others. But the responses did trigger in me some memories of bad days in the ad agency.
@Covered End is right to point out that the process should probably have involved some kind of wider testing with a group of fans before presenting it in what looks like a final stage "give us the money and we'll do it".
Skimming through the responses since then, I think @aliwibble raises key questions. What's it celebrating exactly - what message does it wish to convey, what emotional response? And very importantly, in whom? Who is what the comms industry calls the key/ core target audience? Many of the responses on the thread come from people who were there on the day, some of whom may have put in a lot of prior effort to help get us there. Covered End and I are in that group, and we have strong feelings about the day. We are not the core target audience, though, as I understand it. We've got our own collections of memorabilia and don't need to be told how important it was in the history of our club. I think the overall objective of this thing is to help cement the legendary nature of the return in the minds of "younger" fans (and its sobering to reflect that target group may now include some Dads bringing their kids for the first time). In the ad world, those are considerations behind the "brief".
I woke up too with the uncomfortable thought that back in the day when we presented the first sketches of the Valley Party posters to a meeting of about 60 of the VP volunteers, the response was far more positive than we see here, so clearly whatever the rights and wrongs of individual points, overall the proposal isn't "right". But in the VP case, some of the best planners in the advertising world had straightened out our thinking about the message and the target audience, and we'd had that internal discussion in the VP activist group before the first proposals were ready. People sort of knew what to expect. In hindsight perhaps CAST should have tried to assemble a focus group comprised only of fans from the target demographic before releasing an advanced concrete proposal on here.
I don't want to come across as entirely negative because, I think it's a good idea and the people behind it have the club and its history at heart. So thanks to CAST and the BTTV30 Committee for promoting the idea and to sammy391 for your explanations here. It may be a painful experience getting such a lot of negative feedback, but I'm hopeful that you'll be able to use it to produce something that you can all be really proud of. For the record, I would be happy to contribute to a mural but I'm sorry to say not this one.
The idea is great and I will be happy to contribute once a suitable design has been agreed upon.
If it's failed, it's because it hasn't captured that feeling of euphoria at being back.
Be great if the names were Included some how, but where do you drawn the line of the BTTV role call.
It's tricky to please all, glad I'm not the one having to do so !
- The goal (obviously)
- The cheer that went up in the town hall and all the celebrations that evening
- The campaign posters
- The balloons
- Roger Alwen opening the gates
That's five things that tend to come up time and time again. It would be VERY difficult for a mural to capture all of these things at once, though. I wonder if a mural itself even is the best option? Or if several panels would be better?