For ten years the long wall on Tanner Street was grey. The council painted over anything that appeared on it, usually within a day, at a cost of about forty thousand a year.

Since March the same council has paid artists to cover it. Every Monday morning a new set of posters goes up, edge to edge, sixty metres long.

The change of mind

The officer who ran the cleaning budget made the case herself. She had kept a count: the wall was painted grey 212 times in one year and stayed grey for an average of nineteen hours.

"We were paying for a colour nobody had asked for," she said. "I worked out we could pay for the opposite and have money left."

The new scheme costs a little over half the old one.

How Monday works

A rota of twelve print studios takes turns. Each gets the wall for one week and a fixed fee. There is one rule: nothing for sale, which keeps advertising off it.

By eight the paste is dry. By nine there are people photographing it on the way to work. By Friday the posters are torn at the corners and layered with whatever passers-by have added.

Then it is stripped and done again.

What the street says

The bakery opposite reports more customers on Mondays. The school at the end of the road walks a class past it each week.

Not everyone approves. A resident two doors down calls it noise you cannot switch off and has asked for one grey week in four.

The council has agreed to consider that. The studios have offered to print a grey one.