Looking for a unique Christmas present which stretches back 100 years?
Well call in at the SCALA on Friday 18th December between 11am and 3pm to book your place in the Cinema queue that will stretch back 100years to when films were first shown in Prestatyn.
Prestatyn Youth Arts Festival in partnership with the SCALA has commissioned artist and illustrator Paul Young to design a mural with local children and the Community which will completely cover the full length of the wall on the ground floor of the Venue.
Paul Young has been involved with the Arts, and Art projects in Prestatyn and Denbighshire for over ten years. He has been working as a book cover illustrator for 20 years. His work can be seen at
2010 will see the Scala Cinema and Arts centre celebrating 100 years of cinema, a celebration which is shared by very few cinemas. The History Queue will consist of one hundred people, one person for each year. From the back of the queue, which will represent the present day, we will travel back in time to the front of the queue, 1910. Peoples clothes and hairstyles will change over the years, all the peoples faces will be of real local people with stories to tell about their past experiences. Every person in the queue will have a story to tell which will eventually be placed on a public media station next to the Mural.
Some places will be free, places chosen from people nominated from the Community. We need help from the people in the local community, to suggest who they think should be nominated to be in the queue, and why. Fifty places in the Mural are being sold for 50 pounds each to the first fifty people who come to the Scala on Friday morning.
The final closing date for a purchased place is January 31st 2010. The fifty nominated places will be open until Feb / March. An information pack is available from the Scala Foyer Staff, for purchasing a place in the queue, suggesting someone you might know, now, or from the past, that you feel should be in the History Queue Mural.
The money raised will help fund the Mural which has also received money from the Arts Council of Wales, N Power and Denbighshire County Council.
Paul Young, assisted by Leanne Foxley and Sue Reece, has been working with Primary Schools in the area and the children will have their paintings, which are all film related, on display at the Scala in the New Year. Each school will also have children featured in the Mural
If you would like to buy a place in the Mural pop along to the Scala on Friday. The paid places will be sold on a first come first served basis. The community places will be chosen following the closing date of the purchased places at the end of January.
Chair of the Youth Arts Festival Rhiannon Hughes says “This is a very exciting project which will record both the world of film over the last 100 years but also what has happened in the Prestatyn and Meliden community over that period of time.”
