Bendigo Bricks building interest

THE bricks are back, with a new LEGO exhibition starting on Saturday, 10 April.

A 25-metre train layout, great ball contraption, a brick Bendigo Post Office, and more will be on display all entirely made of LEGO.

President of the Bendigo Lego User Group and LEGO ambassador Michael Peebles said interest has been huge and the event will be bigger than ever.

“It’s slowly been growing and been getting more interest,” he said. “Now we get people from Melbourne exhibiting, South Australia, the last Bendigo Bricks in 2019 we even had two international exhibitors.”

“It’s harder trying to run an event like this in a COVID world, we’ve had to go to full online ticketing, and we’re limited for numbers.

“We had to change venues up to the Bendigo Exhibition centre just for the square meterage.

“Bendigo LEGO User Group is a not-for-profit, a lot of the proceeds from this event go to the Bendigo Scout group to keep them functioning.”

Former LEGO Masters Australia contestants Kale, Annie and Runa will be in attendance for the second biggest LEGO event in Victoria.

With the Bendigo LEGO User Group restarting their physical meetups, Mr Peebles said any LEGO enthusiasts are welcome.

“We meet once a month on the last Sunday of the month,” he said.

“Effectively we just share what we’re building, new sets, if somebody’s working on a project it’s a nice social gathering.”

Mr Peebles said LEGO has grown in popularity over the last 10 years, thanks to The LEGO Movie and the reality TV show.

“I think it’s probably brought forward the fact that they’re not just toys, they’re creating some pretty phenomenal stuff,” he said.

“It’s a creative medium, it’s no different to sculpting clay or painting a picture, just that the medium we use are plastic bricks.

“There are limitations to what you can do with bricks, but for most of the adult fans of LEGO it’s about pushing those boundaries to take a fairly block-ish medium and try to make something that people can recognise.”

Tickets for Bendigo Bricks are available at bendigobricks.com.