The campus was incredibly busy this Sunday 2nd October, with the bi-annual event Stoke-Con-Trent hitting our venue LRV, as well as the Brindley Building and Science Centre.
People have been reported to have travelled from outside the country to visit the convention, as well as people coming from areas outside of Staffordshire.
The previous event, which happened earlier this year had a number of guests, one of which was Paul Blake, who played fan-favourite bounty hunter Greedo in Star Wars.
He spoke very highly of the
university, claiming that he was also impressed with how Stoke-on-Trent was developing.
“There has been so much development in Stoke-On-Trent, especially with the impressive University campus and the culture quarter.”
This year, guests included Mike Fielding and Dave Brown who played Naboo and Bollo in popular comedy The Mighty Boosh, a cohort of guests from ‘Allo ‘Allo and Red Dwarf and many more.
As always, both students and non-students attended with many of them cosplaying and trying to win in one of the two costume-building contests, for under 16’s or over 16’s.
The cosplayers took part in a parade to showcase their talents and costumes, where judges decided which people went through to the finals on the stage, which lead to Storage Hunters star Jesse McClure guest judging the entrants.
For the under 16’s, a young boy dressed as Two Face from Batman won, and for the overs, a man who had commissioned a Wolf Man costume was crowned the winner.
The event is growing in popularity from year to year and even won ComicConvention’s ‘Convention of the Year Award’ in 2015.
Organiser Terry Bossons said “It’s certainly helping Stoke’s tourist industry, as well as a lot of local companies.”
“I’ll use local companies as much as possible, as well as using Staffordshire University as the convention’s location. It brings more people to the campus which can only benefit everyone.”
As well as guests, there were a load of attractions such as a Tardis, Thunderbird props and a moving and talking Dalek, as well as a number of stalls selling anything from wigs to retro gaming consoles.
LRV were even offering themed drinks and food such as the 'Han Burger' and the 'Bantha Shake'.
Terry let us know the amount of work that goes into setting this up.
“When it comes to guests, we’ll be in contact with around 500 celebrities, but usually we’ll only book around 35.”
“This isn’t because they don’t want to come, just becomes they’re filming or are busy.”
“If this is the case then we just put them on ice for another time.”
The next Stoke-Con-Trent won't be until early next year, but the convention is going from strength to strength so if you're upset that you missed this one, there's always another chance.
We would also like to congratulate Lee Scally and Jo Chell, who happened to get engaged at the event after meeting each other at a previous Stoke-Con.