Jersey could become the Channel Islands' centre of 'cosplay'

Wednesday 26 April 2017

While many might not have wielded a superhero cape since their primary school dress-up days, a group of islanders is hoping to get that hobby out into the mainstream with a brand new convention.

Islander Kelly Langdon is hoping to bring the ‘cosplay’ craze – an activity in which comic, film and gaming enthusiasts don themselves in the kit of their favourite otherworldly characters – to Jersey in the form of a large-scale convention.

Modelled on the popular Comic-Con, which attracts thousands of pop culture fans to San Diego each year, Ms Langdon would love to see such an event take place at Fort Regent and has already recruited a team to get the mission moving. 

She’s working on the project alongside her partner, as well as a local advertiser and a cosplay expert that has previously judged on cosplay competitions in the UK.

Ms Langdon told Express that she was first inspired by a trip to a UK gaming convention with her partner.

“We were chatting to a stall who were selling some items and we were explaining how there’s not much to do in Jersey and you don’t get things like this in Jersey, and the stall owners actually said, 'If you can get a convention organised in Jersey, we’d definitely come along.' And it sort of just snowballed from there. I sat down, I took the head on it and said, ‘Actually, this is quite a good idea. We’ve never had anything like this in Jersey, we could market to a lot of people.'” she said.

That was back in March - and already they have received “major interest” from the local cosplay community.

But CiCon – a contraction of ‘Channel Islands Convention’ by which the event will be known if it gets the go-ahead – is still in its “very early stages” and looking to gauge interest from the wider public.

They’ll be conducting some unconventional market research outside Voisins this Saturday – completely in character, with the help of well-known faces from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Thor.

Ms Langdon added: “We want to find out what the public want to see, when they would like to see it and also how much they would be willing to pay for this to happen… Things are moving very very quickly. It’s exciting.”