I will be sponsoring one of the new competitions at Blitherscrum this year:-

The Totally Silent Shanty Group competition

Now, I know that this will be a hugely popular event and there will be more entries than there will be time for during the festival so the judges that I have appointed will be listening to recordings of groups on demo CDs that are sent in and from them, the judges will draw up a short list that will be invited to compete at the festival itself.

RULES FOR ENTRY
* Only Shanty groups of less than 5000 may enter.
* Each Demo must include at least 50 totally silent shanties
* One member of each group must be appointed to introduce and give background information on each shanty. Like the shanties themselves, these intros must be totally silent.
* The judges decision (which will be given in a silent announcement) is final
* The closing date for entries is 1st January 2013 on the Mayan calendar