Cream of Shropshire celebrated in mural
It has taken almost a week of hard work but a mural designed to celebrate Shropshire has been completed.
Landmarks shown in the mural by a county graffiti artist and organised with BBC Radio Shropshire include Southwater, Ironbridge and the popular "spider web" from Telford Town Park.
Johnty O'Donnell, from Radio Shropshire, said the idea was to celebrate Telford and Shropshire.
But he and artist Neil Willis wanted to see people's personal interpretations of what the county means to them.
Mr O'Donnell said they had an "incredible" response from members of the public suggesting landmarks they would like to see.
He said: "It has been absolutely fantastic. Right up until the last minute people were suggesting things they would like to see. We had an A3 flip pad and there were just pages and pages where people had written things down.
"The beauty of spray paint is that you can put something on there and just cover it up with something else. There must be about 20 elements to the picture, and people suggested all of them.
"But there must have been another 200 that didn't make it, but that was always going to be the way.
"The Ironbridge was always going to be on there and so many people suggested Richie Woodhall and Mickey Bushell.
"People said they wanted to see the industrial heritage represented but they also wanted to see its green spaces, which is why the Kingfisher was so prominent because you get them around the Ironbridge Gorge. Southwater was one of the last five pieces to be painted which was nice because it went from its heritage into the future."
Mr Willis began work on Monday and it took until Thursday lunchtime for the 6ft high, 16ft wide canvas to be completed.
People walking past the Arts Alive Gallery in Telford Shopping Centre, close to Poundland, were encouraged to stop by and give suggestions of landmarks to be painted. Mr Willis is a Telford man from borough-based company Auniqueart.
He also runs a tattoo parlour in Trench Lock and has been doing graffiti workshops since the 1980s and regularly does work for V Festival.
The painting will be kept at Galleries Alive in Telford Shopping Centre for the forseeable future.
