Inside Lightroom’s New Immersive David Bowie Experience
London has found a new way to celebrate its most mercurial son. This spring, Lightroom in King’s Cross will unveil David Bowie: You’re Not Alone, an immersive 360-degree experience that invites audiences inside the creative mind of one of music’s most visionary figures. You can find our previous coverage of the Vogue experience at Lightroom here.
The show, which opens in April, is not another Bowie retrospective. It is Bowie, in his own voice. Written and directed by Mark Grimmer and Tom Wexler of design studio 59 Productions, the creative team behind the V&A’s landmark David Bowie Is exhibition, You’re Not Alone uses unseen archival footage, reconfigured live performances and rare personal material to craft what Lightroom describes as an intimate self-portrait. Every note and image has been reimagined for Lightroom’s spatial sound and wraparound projection system, offering a sensory experience that feels both cinematic and deeply personal.
A Journey Through Bowie’s Performances
Drawing from thousands of hours of film stored in the David Bowie Archive in New York, the show spans his most iconic eras, from Space Oddity and Diamond Dogs to Heroes and Blackstar. Visitors are invited to step inside these moments rather than simply watch them, moving through thematic chapters that explore Bowie's lifelong fascinations: theatricality, spirituality, the art of songwriting and the power of transformation.
The result feels like walking through a living documentary. One moment, the Diamond Dogs tour materialises before your eyes; the next, Bowie spars playfully with Russell Harty in their 1975 television interview. Each vignette captures the wit, vulnerability and curiosity that made him such an enduring figure in popular culture.
The Man Behind the Masks
Unlike many Bowie tributes, You’re Not Alone deliberately avoids leaning on his characters such as Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke, and instead focuses on the man who created them. “We designed a show to celebrate Bowie as a champion of human creativity,” says Grimmer. “He repeatedly resisted being figured as anything but human.”
That sentiment shapes the show’s emotional core. Here, Bowie’s voice guides the audience through his own reflections on art and identity. The sound design, by Olivier and Tony Award-winner Gareth Fry, ensures every breath, lyric and line lands with precision. It feels as though Bowie himself has returned to narrate his life from within Lightroom’s walls.
Inside the Artist’s Imagination
Executive producer David Sabel describes Lightroom as “an opportunity to step inside an artist’s imagination.” The space, which has already collaborated with David Hockney, Anna Wintour and Apple TV, has become a cultural laboratory for exploring how technology can heighten emotion.
Bowie’s world is a perfect fit. His career was a study in metamorphosis, and You’re Not Alone mirrors that fluidity through light, sound and film. Audiences will move through time rather than merely watch it pass, glimpsing the evolution of a man who spent his life asking what it means to be alive.
A Legacy Reimagined
Authorised by the David Bowie Estate and produced in close collaboration with RZO and the Bowie Archive, the show is both tribute and time machine. It reminds us that Bowie’s greatest creation was not a persona but the art of reinvention itself.
Tickets for David Bowie: You’re Not Alone go on sale from 10 February, priced from £25 for adults and £15 for students and concessions. The show will run from 22 April to 28 June at Lightroom, with additional dates expected for summer.