Video and pictures: Telford tattoo festival celebrates craft

The event, which took place on Saturday and Sunday at Park Inn Hotel in Telford, saw scores of artists coming together to showcase their skills, compete, and raise money for charity.

Ian Marshall, organiser and a tattooist of more than 25 years, said the festival had proved a massive hit with the public and allowed people to celebrate the skills and the craft behind their artwork.

He said: "The event started as sort of a kick-back. There are a lot of tattooists my age who have been in the craft for a long time who were disillusioned with the big events. We saw the industry had been compromised by publishing companies who were not interested in the soul or the craft behind it.

"It was a kick-back to those publishing companies who have turned it into an industry and not a craft."

Around 80 tattoo artists attended the event, with funds raised at the festival going to the Combat Stress charity.

Mr Marshall, who has three tattoo shops of his own in Wellington, Dawley, and Newport, said that the weekend had been a huge success and attracted people of all types.

He said: "There has been a great attendance which is good for the charity Combat Stress, and we have got all sorts of people here. It is mostly people who are interested in tattooing and body modification, but we get couples, families, we get people who call themselves tattoo collectors, who get themselves tattooed by different artists.

"We have kept the show quite small, it would be very easy to grow it on a massive commercial level but we don't do that because we like to work again with the people we know. We know everyone who attends the show and that creates a really nice atmosphere."