10-year-old Sophia van den Bos has unveiled her award-winning artwork at Lowry, Salford alongside the famous LS Lowry works that inspired it.
Sophia was selected from over 700 entries as the winner of the 2025 Copley Prize, Lowry’s annual art competition for primary school aged children to enter their own artworks inspired by LS Lowry.
Sophia’s artwork will remain on display in the Andrew Law Galleries for a year where it’s expected to be viewed by up to 100,000 visitors.
Sophia, whose work is titled Bustling Street said
“I drew this artwork inspired by LS Lowry, just more modern and colourful. Lowry’s art inspires me to see beauty in everyday life.”
Sophia was welcomed to Lowry on Wednesday 10th September, alongside her family, to hang her painting at the arts centre in Salford Quays — home to the world’s largest public collection of works by the British painter LS Lowry.
Sophia’s work was chosen as this year’s overall winner by Alison and Noel Copley, who founded the competition in 2013 as an exciting way to encourage primary-aged children to develop their creativity and artistic ability. The prize invites children to recreate their own modern-day versions of LS Lowry’s work, in ways that represent the world that they live in, often capturing images of the environment around them, just as Lowry did.
Curator of the LS Lowry collection at Lowry, Claire Stewart says “LS Lowry spent a lot of time on the streets of Manchester and Salford and said I just painted what I saw – or the way I saw it, and what is marvellous about Sophia’s picture is that she has done the same. She has painted just what she might see on a walk through town and filled it with colour and vitality. It’s a very worthy winner”
Any primary school-aged children (Key Stage 1 & 2) can submit their work now for the 2026 Copley Prize. Find out more at thelowry.com/get-creative/
