Past Projects

Historic Gloucester Builds

We were approached by Gloucester City Council with an idea to re-create several of Gloucester’s historic buildings that no longer exist, in order to show the public some of the fascinating buildings that lie under the streets of Gloucester, in particular the historic Westgate Street area.

We undertook the challenge and working from to scale archaeological plans and drawings we re-created the Roman Forum of Gloucester, part of the Medieval Westgate Street and the Foreign Bridge which once crossed the river Severn and now lies beneath a roundabout as you approach the city centre. Simply click the photo of the Roman Forum above to see photos of the full builds as well as some of the details.

These builds were initially hired in for a period of one week but proved to be very popular, with around 3000 members of the public viewing and taking part in activities in a single week.  They were subsequently re-hired for a further period with around a further 2000 visitors.  Both of these hire periods were accompanied by workshops provided by us, as well as two competitions which were also very popular. Marc Waters, event coordinator of The Folk Of Gloucester museum who had the initial weeks display, commended the builds and stated that the displays pulled in a much wider demographic than the museum would usually attract and that they would love to host further historical LEGO® builds and events in the future which is something that we are currently working on with them.

Barnsley Bright Nights

After delivering some of our usual workshops for Barnsley Museums to accompany 20-21 Visual Arts ‘Brick By Brick’ exhibition we were asked if we could provide any workshops with LEGO® bricks to accompany Barnsley Bright Nights. We offered them a workshop enabling members of the public the chance to create their own ‘stained glass windows’ that were created with translucent LEGO® parts. These were then built into a church window style of frame by our staff, and back lit with powerful lights to achieve the desired effect.

The workshops proved very popular with the public, with over 330 windows built over the course of the three nights that the Bright Nights ran for. Click the image above to see the completed windows as well as some in-progress photos.

Jude Holland, Learning Manager for Barnsley Museums, said that they had great feedback from the public who took part in the workshops, and that they definitely wanted to work with us again in the future.

Iconic Beverley Buildings

We were approached by the Treasure House Museum and Beverley Art Gallery to produce some recreations of iconic buildings that are in the town of Beverley in East Yorkshire. We discussed possible ideas and came up with three buildings which are well known landmarks in Beverley. Probably the most famous (bar the huge Beverley Minster) is Beverley North Bar within/without which is the original northern entrance to Beverley and proved to be an interesting build as we really wanted to recreate the effect of the original medieval brick work which is narrower than the modern bricks and stone buildings that surround the gate itself. In order to do this we made each brick from 2×1 plates and used a mixture of colours to attempt to replicate the mix of colours from the medieval firing processes. As well as this we also imagined the interiors of the adjoining buildings so that we could include them in the competition that we ran alongside the display of the builds.

Our second build was the frontage of the Guildhall which is now a small museum with large stone columns supporting the portico on the front. Lastly we built the Market Cross which is often used as a meeting point for people within the town, and we suspect that this has been the case since it was built. We had previously built the frontage of Beverley library for the Treasure House so we have included photos of this in the gallery as well – simply click the photo above to view all of the builds.

Sarah Hammond, Treasure House Education Officer, said that the builds had been a great local draw and had engaged people to see the rest of the Treasure Houses displays and that the competition encouraged children to really look at the displays to find the answers they needed.

Foundations Live Competition Builds

We were asked by Hobson and Porter Ltd if we could provide an activity to both help engage young visitors to their Foundations Live event, which is a construction industry trade show that encourages young people into the construction industry, and to highlight some of the main trade partners that support the show which raises money for the Lighthouse Charity.

We provided a spot the minifigure competition but featuring builds showing what each trade  partner company actually does. This was interesting as it gave us quite a wide range of differing builds, but ones that were all tied to the construction industry. We ended up creating thirteen individual builds that were situated throughout the event plus a full construction site with working tower crane as our main build. We received lots of great comments from young people and the visiting trades people, and ended up having our photo taken in front of our build with Mark Millar, who was one of the mainstays of the DIY SOS TV program who was very impressed with our builds.

Click on the photo above to see the gallery and for more information on the Foundations Live event visit https://www.foundationslive.co.uk/

This is a custom build that we created for GW Powersafe Ltd of Hull. They tasked us with recreating their office and warehouse building which came with some interesting challenges. To create the vertical corrugation effect on the building all of the walls had to built with the studs facing sideways which made for some technical building techniques. As well as this some parts required custom painting, parts had to be modified in some case as well as some gluing of parts to help with structural integrity.

Lastly we added a welcome sign as the build was to be placed in the reception and a minifigure version of Dan Haley, the Managing Director of GW who gives each visitor a wave.

Museum Of Gloucester (MOG) Mosaic Workshops

We provided two types of workshop to accompany our Historic Gloucester builds that were on display at The Museum Of Gloucester, one being boat building workshops and the other being mosaic building. Both were popular and well received but we are highlighting the mosaic workshop here.

The public that were taking part in the workshop we given instructions by the BrickBox staff about how to build mosaics in LEGO® bricks, and they were then tasked with creating their own mosaics either with 1×1 or 2×2 LEGO® Bricks to their own designs assisted by the BrickBox staff. Those involved managed to create some awesome mosaics on a variety of themes, from 8 bit computer games through to Halloween staples, movie characters and even an undersea scene.

Amy Washington, Events and Marketing Manager for the Museum Of Gloucester, said that the workshops were well received with several people inquiring as to when the next workshops would be happening? BrickBox are currently working with the team at MOG on further ideas for future workshops.