A new Timaru event is aiming to celebrate all things geeky and bring hobbyists, gamers and collectors together for a good cause.
Organised by Charlie Rawstorn and Jo Lloyd from The Shiny Squad and Nikki and Phil Brown from Mana and Meeples, WishCon is a new pop culture and gaming convention set to held at the Scottish Hall in Barnard St on Saturday, August 30.
Miss Lloyd said the idea for the event initially grew from a competition at her workplace, EB Games.
‘‘At work we have a fundraiser every year and it’s a competition to see who can raise the most money for charity. We [The Shiny Squad] wanted to really put the fun back in fundraising and try something really different.
‘‘We started out thinking of just having a couple games and different options in the shop and then after talking to Nikki [Mana and Meeples] about it, I was like ‘why not just do a convention’.
‘‘One thing led to another and it’s turned into a whole little event now. We’re just trying to get more people involved in trading cards, board games and just more nerdy stuff in general and then raise some money for charity.’’
The convention, which runs from 9.30am-5pm, will feature activities and attractions like Beyblade battles, Dungeons & Dragons adventures, a board game library, various vendors, Pokemon TCG ‘‘learn-to-play’’ sessions, a cosplay and dress parade as well as art and creativity competitions.
All net proceeds from the event will be donated to charity.
A full schedule of activities can be found on the WishCon website.
Ms Brown, from Mana and Meeples, said that with the hobbyist community growing and becoming more popular, she hoped the event could be a gateway to get even more people involved and bring already established groups together.
‘‘We’re new to Timaru and we’ve been long time hobbyists up in Auckland. When we got to Timaru we thought, where can we go to play board games? Where can we go to play card games or trade cards? Where can we go to do all these fun hobby things?
‘‘There’s little pockets of people that we found all over the place and there’s lots of really enthusiastic people. But there hasn’t been one place that people can come together or they don’t know about each other.’’
The event was all about bringing people together to celebrate their hobbies, she said.
‘‘Whether it’s card games, board games, trading cards, or that kind of thing, we want to create a safe place people can come, really enjoy, be themselves and celebrate their love of games.’’
Mr Brown said it had been great to see so many people interested and wanting to be a part of the new convention.
‘‘As soon as we launched the website and the Facebook page, we just had so many enthusiastic people contacting us.
‘‘There’s so many niche groups around and it’s one of those things where if you like one thing there’s a good chance you like two or three of them.
‘‘There’s a lot of people here that have a shared passion and interest, so let’s just celebrate together.’’
The hope was to grow and make the convention a yearly event, Ms Brown said.
‘‘This year is really teething it, testing the grounds and we’ll see what happens. It was a bit last minute but I think we’ve done pretty well in a limited time frame and done our best to do something cool.
‘‘We’ve got some big names attending like Hobby Lords from Dunedin, the guy running the Beyblade tournament is a national judge.
‘‘We also have award-winning Dungeons & Dragons game master Brad Thompson from Auckland, who will be running D&D and another social deduction board game called Blood on the Clocktower.’’
Tickets can be purchased on the WishCon website or at the door and cost $5 for children aged 5 to 12, $10 for anyone over 13 and under 5s are free.
Limited tickets were also available for those wishing to participate in the Dungeons & Dragons and Blood on the Clocktower sessions.
