Mid Island Brick Fest – Bigger and Better!
MILUG’s 4th annual Mid Island Brick Fest was bigger and better than ever this year! The LEGO®-filled event took place last weekend at Country Club Centre in Nanaimo. Over 2 dozen LEGO® enthusiasts shared their custom models, LEGO® stop-motion videos and LEGO® photography at the busy event. We also had a variety of activity stations for fans to participate in.
In addition to individual MOCs and smaller collaborations, MILUG also showcased a seasonal/holiday-themed Fallout Shelter style club collaboration. Members each created a themed room related to a holiday or season and there was so much variety! We added lighting to make it easier to see all the fun details. This came in handy for the search-and-find. We also invited TFOLs to participate again this year. As always they impressed us with their fantastic MOCs and stop motion videos.
We also brought back the fan favourite – play brick and the wacky race ramp! Kids and adults alike enjoyed building unique creations to send screaming down the ramp. And competition was tough this year!
New this year, and also very popular, was the LEGO® Stuntz bikes skee-ball style activity station. These speedy pull-back bikes were launched into the air using various ramps in an attempt to land them in one of five holes.
In addition to the wacky race ramp and Stuntz bikes, there was also LEGO colouring, LEGO® books and fun facts, and a LEGO® mosaic demonstration. Thanks again to True North Bricks for creating the LEGO® colouring sheets and to the Vancouver Island Regional Library – Wellington Branch for the LEGO® book station! Both stations provided a quieter and calmer activity space for those needing a break.
Although not new at Mid Island Brick Fest, this was also the first year that our partner, Nanaimo Science, had their LEGO® robotics station located in the Mid Island Brick Fest event space. It was awesome watching all the kids take control of the robots by designing a sequence of actions using drop-and-drag code building on an i-Pad.
The LEGO® mosaic demonstration was also a new addition to the Mid Island Brick Fest. Those with a keen eye will notice the image contains our own brick-built logo for the Mid Island Brick Fest. The custom mosaic was created using 25,600 1×1 LEGO® plates in 23 different colours! It was built on 25 baseplates (32×32) and stood over 4 feet tall and over 4 feet wide.
Attendees were also welcome to guess the number of minifigures in the jar (somehow we missed taking a photo of the giant jar of minifigures). We received over 150 entries ranging from 94 to 80,000. The winning number (555) was only 6 away from the actual total (549). Though not the winner, our favourite entry was “All of them”! The winner received the LEGO® Creator Classic Winter Holiday Train polybag.
Be sure to check out our Facebook albums for more photos of the MOCs, close-up shots of the seasonal/holiday-themed Fallout Shelter rooms, and our LEGO® photography exhibit.
We will see you all next year at the 5th annual Mid Island Brick Fest!
