I gave a brief mention to the new Griffish Isles convention a couple of weeks ago when I posted a roundup of UK cons planned for 2018. At the time very little information was available and so some of what I said was guesswork. However, the convention's official website has recently been considerably expanded, so it seems reasonable to revisit the subject now.
The con's date remains set for Saturday 19th May. In the middle of Everfree Northwest, though I rather doubt anyone will manage to attend both!
The venues have now been announced as the St Thomas Centre (M12 6FZ) and the upstairs function room at Powerleague Football (M12 4JD). These are both about 12 minutes' walk from Manchester Piccadilly station, and they're about six minutes' walk from each other. This is very good news for potential attendees: proximity to a mainline rail station is a major plus for a convention.
The reason for the split venues is interesting. The St Thomas Centre will be used during the daytime for various talks, activities and games, and is also where vendors will be. This venue will be alcohol-free, not something I've seen at a UK-based pony convention before. The Powerleague function room will be used in the late afternoon and evening, and will be a chilled social and musical space which will have alcohol (cider!) on sale. There is a downside to this, though, which I'll get to in the tickets section below.
The staff page ("Organisers") has been updated and now features five people, with potted biographies of each one. I don't know them all, but I do know some of them and they're names that reassure me. This is all looking very promising.
The mascot has been unveiled – and as you might expect, she's a griffon! Her name is Bobbie and as you might also expect with a name like that, there's a touch of the friendly police officer about her. She was drawn by StormBlaze, an excellent artist who is well known and respected in the British fandom.
The one crucial piece of information that we don't yet know is the price of tickets, though the site does say that these are expected to be released in about a month. Hopefully prices will be announced before the actual release, to avoid too much of a scramble. There will be two tiers, the higher of which will include a T-shirt.
A major difference from UK PonyCon is that only adults will be able to stay for the whole event. Powerleague's licence conditions mean that under-18s will have to leave by 8pm, while "Foal" tickets (available to kids with an adult) will be valid only until 4pm. This is a shame, albeit an understandable one in the circumstances.
You can never tell until a convention actually happens how successful it will be, but so far Griffish Isles seems to be on course. Here's hoping it turns out that way!
No comments:
Post a Comment