Access All Areas, Far From the Norm, LUNG and Ockham’s Razor join Birmingham Royal Ballet, Opera North, the National Theatre and Rambert as Partner Companies at the Salford arts venue

The Lowry has announced four new Partner Companies that will collaborate and work closely with the arts venue to regularly present work of the highest calibre to Salford audiences.

Access All Areas, Far From the Norm, LUNG and Ockham’s Razor have all been added to The Lowry’s stable of Partner Companies.

The four new additions join Birmingham Royal Ballet, Opera North, the National Theatre and Rambert who have been Partner Companies at The Lowry, Salford, since it opened.

Matthew Eames, Head of Theatres (Contemporary & Commissioning) at The Lowry, said: “We are delighted to join forces with Access All Areas, Far From the Norm, LUNG and Ockham's Razor to support each other over the coming years. 

“We have built strong relationships with all of these companies and it felt right to recognise more formally the contribution their work makes to our programme and our audiences. It also gives us a platform to think about how we can work together to achieve even more. Alongside our long established and valued partners, we feel these new partnerships will help represent the entirety of our performance programme.”

Access All Areas makes award-winning, disruptive performance by learning disabled and autistic artists. Their productions create intimate moments of interaction between performers and public, occupying unexpected spaces in venues, on the streets, online, and in public buildings. As well as making shows, their company of Associate Artists works to make culture more inclusive for learning disabled and autistic talent. Access All Areas engages communities, trains artists of the future, and works closely with TV, film, and theatre companies to make their work and workplaces more accessible. All their work, from productions, to consultancy, to creative workshops, is co-led by learning disabled and autistic artists, ensuring lived experience drives everything they do.

Far From The Norm was founded in a youth club in Dagenham in 2009, and is an award winning London based Hip Hop dance theatre company led by Artistic Director Botis Seva - one of the most unique and seminal voices of his generation with an aim to be the voice for those around him, and create art to transform the lives of others. Far From The Norm’s work can be experienced through mid-large-scale indoor theatre productions, outdoor performance contexts and short dance films: all of which have reached national & international audiences. Their work is a genre-defying blend of physical poetry steeped in Black pop culture, incorporating faith, personal stories of Black experiences, with incomparable physicality and theatrics. 

LUNG, founded in Barnsley in 2012, is a campaign led verbatim theatre company that tours work nationally. They work closely with different communities to make verbatim theatre and hidden voices heard. LUNG creates work that shines a light on political, social and economic issues in modern Britain, using people’s actual words to tell their stories. LUNG are Creative Associates with National Theatre Learning on their Speak Up programme in secondary schools. We are winners of the Amnesty International Freedom Expression Award, Fringe First and Sit Up Award for Social Impact. 

Ockham’s Razor is a contemporary circus company who combine circus and visual theatre to make work that is arresting and entertaining. It was formed in 2004 by Charlotte Mooney and Alex Harvey, with Turtle Key Arts becoming producers in 2006. The company specialises in creating exciting and moving physical theatre on original equipment and create stories from the vulnerability, trust and reliance that exists between physical performers. Ockham’s Razor has performed in theatres and festivals throughout the UK and the world and has established a reputation for innovative, emotive, accessible performances.