They’re popping up all over Minehead – jaunty colourful characters made out of stuff people throw away and are all part of Steven Heard’s plan to cheer up the town during the current coronavirus crisis.

Litter campaigner and former town councillor, 52-year-old Steven – who taught himself to weld during the lockdown – has already made 39 sculptures out of scrap metal, based on local businesses and activities and now on display around the town

He plans to make a total of at least 100 of what he calls his “metal heads” and hopes they will “bring a smile in these difficult times”.

They include a cycling baker, a barbecuing butcher and a tractor-driving farmer. Steven’s latest creation, a lifeboatman in full kit outside the Minehead lifeboat station, has been widely praised on social media.

One of his biggest projects, a thank you to the NHS, featured an ambulance with a planter on top and a flashing blue light.

A carpenter, but profoundly deaf and unable to work for health reasons, Steven has spent nine years voluntarily weeding and cleaning Minehead public spaces and campaigning against dog-fouling but with his community work on hold during lockdown, he decided to “craft things out of nothing” to brighten up the town.

Read more in today’s Free Press.