Shire Hall competition shrouded in secrecy

Shire Hall will soon be covered in four metre and seven metre high shrouds covered in characters that represent the story of Monmouth town.

The hoarding that surrounds the building will also show life size people looking up at the shroud as part of the Shire Hall projects efforts to attract visitors to the top half of town.

The hoarding and the shroud will be erected before the end of 2008, once the scaffolding is complete.

Debbie McCarty of Monmouth's One Stop Shop is part of the Shire Hall project team. She explained:

"We recognised that the scaffolding on the building will not show the building in the best light so we decided to ask people in the town for ideas on how we could help the building to keep attracting people.

"We want to help the retailers in Monmouth by keeping visitor numbers high.

"A designer from local practice Platform One approached us with a wonderful idea for a shroud that not only shows characters from the history of our town, but he also suggested that we get the community and visitors involved by making it a competition.

"There will be 64 characters on the shroud representing trades, historical figures and people important to the story of Monmouth.  They are in two rows and are depicted in alphabetical order so the character on the far left is called something beginning with ‘A'.  An example might be someone with a paintbrush and palette, your answer would be ‘artist'.

"At Christmas in 2009, we will gather all the correct entries and draw out three winners who will each receive an extremely valuable prize .

The details will be announced once the shroud has been erected.

"There will be competition forms in the One Stop Shop and an online form on the Monmouthshire County Council website."

David Evans, of Monmouth based firm, Platform One, contributed a significant amount of the time needed for research and the preparation of drawings for free.

"I'm very excited about the prospect of watching people guess what each character is and also to get their reactions to the design.  I've thrown in a few red herrings, so it is a bit of a challenge. The hoarding will also be interesting as it will show the back of all sorts of people reading various facts about the Shire Hall that will also be displayed on the hoarding."

The hoarding will be covered in anti-graffiti paint by MCC's youth service and each drawn character will be printed onto vinyl and applied by another local company, Chillipepper Signs.