Yesterday we posted about the street art that has appeared in the lead up to the gig and the official shirt launch. We didn’t think the images quite did the whole story justice so we grabbed a few minutes with the artists behind the work to give us their take on the whole thing.

The guys behind the project are TJ, Tom and Joe – otherwise known as Krek, Mers and Skotch. They are 3 local lads with a passion for art – whatever the size but as Joe said, “the bigger the scale, the more fun” and it doesn’t get much bigger than approximately 50ft up for the city of Manchester to see.

Their objective was to take the images used to launch the kits and then give them their own, grafitti inspired spin. TJ enthused how the medium of grafitti is a great way to advertise the MCFC/Umbro brand because “grafitti is all about advertising style… about making your own history”.

With many years of experience between them and having worked closely together in the past, (for example, TJ and Joe have been heavily involved in art workshops, in conjunction with the Council, for underprivileged kids), it was no problem getting to work on the comissioned mural. The process was done over 5 nights with the 3 working from 8pm to 6am each day and Jo concedes that they are still adjusting back to normality.

Each of the guys concentrated on an image each and Tom, as a huge City fan, ensured he was the one creating the iconic bluemoon exclaiming “I bagsied that one!” (TJ took care of the away kit image, and Joe the third kit). As they were lofted up on their cherry pickers, as they completed the work, they had already started to receive feedback from the public. Enough people stopped by and as TJ acknowledged: “there were a lot of City fans beeping [their cars], they were really appreciative of it.”

The work is going to remain up for at least 3 months just off Oldham Road, on Cable Street and it only goes to exemplify just how much City is a part of the fabric of Manchester.