BEARING blank placards and braving another summer downpour, community groups in Ebbw Vale marched to the town's former steelworks site in a poignant echo of past industrial protests.

The Ghost Parade - formed by more than 300 children and adults - was billed as part carnival, part surreal protest to mark the 10th anniversary of the closure of the works, and the arrival of Adain Avion, an unusual and eye-catching cultural and social project.

Along the half-mile route from Ebbw Vale leisure centre to the steelworks general office, the march paused under the stone arch of a bridge where grainy film footage of the steelwork's mid-20th Century heyday, and of the marches and struggles to keep it open were projected onto temporary screens.

Once at the works site, the blank placards were pinned to a specially constructed billboard to create a screen for more film footage, again of the steelmaking process, interwoven with home movie footage of steelworkers' lives in the town.

As Ebbw Valley Brass provided a suitably atmospheric soundtrack, the film culminated with more home movie images of the site's major steelmaking buildings being demolished following the July 2002 closure.

Valleys communities hold their histories close, and the parade and films were a simple and very effective way of commemorating Ebbw Vale's steelmaking tradition.

Those battles for the future of steelmaking in the town may ultimately have been lost, but it was apt that the parade should end on the site, which is now in the process of transformation, with the Learning Zone complex in mid-construction forming a dramatic backdrop to the film screen, with tower cranes looming silent nearby.

The march was followed by the transporting of Adain Avion, in the shape of the transformed fuselage of a DC9 aeroplane, which is based this week next to the steelworks general office, and which is hosting a series of arts events.

Adain Avion is part of the UK-wide London 2012 Festival and Wales' major contribution to the Cultural Olympiad.