MODELLBRO 2011, one of the largest European get-together for plastic scale modellers and contest exhibition has been held on June the 17th and 18th in its traditional venue, the Brno Exhibition Centre. This year was ground-breaking in many ways.
One of the most important new concepts was the extension of the programme to Friday afternoon (“MODELLBRNO XXL”). Notable Czech and Slovak modellers demonstrated various techniques in 12 Friday’s workshops both for beginners as well as for more skilled and advanced modellers. Due to limited number of available places at each workshops (max. 20 participants), the attending modellers have a unique chance to ask questions and discuss the topic without being disturbed by other visitors of the show. As this year was the MODELLBRNO XXL premiere, all the workshops have been held in Czech language. According to very good feedback we received from the attending modellers, we believe this is the right way of organizing workshops, so for the next show we do our best to present the best Czech and Slovak modellers in multilingual workshops so the foreign visitor could attend as well.
Most of the 90 traders and manufacturers adapted to programme extension very well by opening their merchandises to allow Friday participants and visitors buy many items with special price and without the usual Saturday rush.
MODELLBRNO is also a place for model club presentations, themed exhibitions and SIGs. 23 model clubs from Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Netherlands, France and United Kingdom accepted our invitation and presented their activities and models. From the 25 this year’s SIGs and themed exhibition it’s worth mentioning the unique “SIG Helicopter”. Helicopter modellers lead by Vladislav Seidl brought to Brno and exhibited more than 180 scale helicopters! Thank to them and other SIG organizers the visitors could see almost 1400 non-competition models which is by 250 more than all other models entered into 90 contest categories!
Junior Plastic Scale Modeller’s Championship of the Czech Republic is also traditional part of the Brno show. Young modellers entered more than 150 beautiful models into competition. Many of these models could even compete in the Masters category. Thank to support from our sponsors and partners we could award almost all the young modellers with a kit. The best four juniors won a voucher to trip to this year’s Scale Model World in Telford.
Next show – MODELLBRNO 2013
This is not a typo – the next show will be held in two years in the second half of June 2013. The organizing team is surprisingly small and we realized that it is really hard to prepare such large show every year and still go to work and have time for our families. On the other hand switching to two-year cycle gives us more time to come up with new concepts and implement new ideas – and so fulfil expectations of our visitors and participating modellers.
Statistics
Total number of public visitors: more than 3000 (children under the age of 15 go free)
Total number of exhibited model kits: 3200 (1150 in the contest categories, 1400 in SIGs and themed exhibitions, 650 in model club presentation)
Total number of contest participants: 370
Total number of participating traders and manufacturers: 84
