Brick Fest Live returns to Monroeville this fall

When Carlajane Donovan and other organizers for the Lego Brick Fest Live event were looking to make a return to in-person events following covid restrictions in 2021, they turned to Monroeville.

“We only did nine shows from September 2021 through the end of the year, and the very first one was in Monroeville,” Donovan said. She is a senior show producer for Brick Fest Live, which will return to the municipality Oct. 7-8, offering hours of entertainment and giving local Lego enthusiasts the chance to show off their builds and collaborate.

Those enthusiasts include Krista Kay of Ross, a member of the Steel City Lego User Group.

“My husband and I had been building and done a couple of conventions, and we’d gone to the first Brick Fest at its original location in Philly (in 2014),” Kay said. “Then the Steel City group started going to Brick Fest Live in 2017.”

Kay’s wheelhouse is old-school, 8-bit video game characters made of Lego bricks.

“I built a 6-foot-tall Pac-Man, I’ve built some Yoshis that were on display at Ross Park Mall for a few months, and my son loves it,” she said.

Donovan said she loves working with members of Steel City.

“Every time they come to our show, they do a big display, and it’s always amazing,” she said. “Local community members at a lot of our shows do these types of fantastic builds. It could be a kid who got a set for Christmas or a group of adults making something huge in a basement. Some of the collections are really phenomenal, and they need to be seen.”

Kay said Steel City LUG members love working with Donovan.

“She’s gracious enough to give us a nice large footprint for all the crazy things we’ve built,” she said.

Those have included everything from Pittsburgh cityscapes to a full carnival layout, beach scenes, underwater coral reefs and a NASA rocket display.

Along with displays from local enthusiasts, Brick Fest Live includes a giant brick pit for photos, a “Minecraft Zone” themed on the popular video game, a black-light building area with glow-in-the-dark Legos, a three-dimensional “graffiti wall” and a floor mural that has set the mark recognized by Guinness World Records for the largest floor puzzle made of Legos.

Donovan said that, along with the floor mosaic, the derby races are her favorite — organizers provide contestants with a chassis to build their own Lego car and compete with it.

“You have siblings racing one another, dads racing their kids, and it’s so much fun,” she said.

And when it comes to the bigger builds, enthusiasts like Kay sometimes have to get creative.

“When I built the Pac-Man, I ended up sourcing (yellow) bricks from all over the world,” she said. “There’s a great site for it called BrickLink, which is sort of an open marketplace for parts.”

In addition to projects for Brick Fest, Kay and others take the fun on the road.

“Last week, we went to Bellevue Elementary Extravaganza Night, and we did a Boy Scout banquet that Saturday,” she said. “And we started our first celebration of International Lego Day at Ross Park Mall in January. We’re looking forward to growing that event.”

Donovan said that creative spirit is a big part of why show organizers enjoy coming to Monroeville.

“In addition to being the first show once we came back after the pandemic, Monroeville was also one of the very first places we went after our initial Philadelphia show in 2014,” she said. “We have a great relationship with the folks there, and the event has always done well.”

For tickets, see BrickFestLive.com.