Museum of Surrey presents their largest Lego exhibit

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The Museum of Surrey is hosting its seventh and largest Lego exhibit until March 31 in collaboration with the Vancouver Lego Club (VLC), a community of adult Lego fans.

“Everything is Still Awesome,” features themed Lego displays like pirates and adventures, and celebrates the 20-year-long partnership between the museum and VLC brick creators.

“One of the most important things for us is that everything the Vancouver Lego Club does with us, must align with our mission,” says Lynn Adam Saffery, the museum’s manager.

“Our mission is to get people excited, to ignite imaginations, and connect people to Surrey, and then also to the wider world. To do that, we want to contribute to community life. We want to celebrate Surrey’s past, present, and future. We want to be innovative, delightful, dynamic, and tell stories.”

The theme for the exhibit is “nostalgia,” which Saffery says honours Lego’s 90th anniversary and reflects on the “best of” what the VLC has done with the museum in the past.

“We’ve integrated a large timeline that looks at the basic bricks from the 1950s and 60s, all the way into space and diversity, so the figures are from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds now,” Saffery adds. “We even have a display on braille bricks.”

He says the brick creators also built artifacts like a gramophone, which is an old-fashioned record player, and represented different things people would have done in the past in Surrey with Lego.

Saffery says the exhibit also has a sci-fi section, which includes the “Museum of Space” display, a play on the Museum of Surrey, and futuristic interpretations of iconic city structures, such as the Simon Fraser University campus and SkyTrain.

The exhibit also has immersive displays of familiar Lego themes where visitors can enter a castle to see the layout and go under a tunnel to see the Caribbean with viking ships, Saffery says.

He also says the exhibit incorporates recycled or modified pieces from previous VLC displays to reflect the museum’s commitment to sustainability.

Planning the exhibit took two years, with the museum reaching out to VLC a month after their last exhibit.

“In terms of actually building [pieces], it can take planning. [Brick creators] will map it out on a computer program or by hand. They will then look at scale to make sure it all works … and it makes sense in the real world. A piece could take hundreds of hours.”

Besides giving brick creators the space to share their large displays with the public, the museum is also welcoming young Lego fans to become inspired by the exhibit and build their own pieces. The museum will display children’s creations in a “Show and Share” space in the gallery upstairs.

Saffery says he hopes visitors understand building and creating things is not just for kids or a certain demographic or group.

“Our [goal] is that when people come, they feel inspired,” he says. 

“They feel like they want to create, but also that they can look at the world and say, ‘How can we make this world into a space that is more engaging? Where people can work together. Where it doesn’t matter what your ethnicity is. Where you can all come together and find ways to contribute to a better society.’”

To attend the free exhibit and for more information, visit www.surrey.ca/arts-culture/museum-of-surrey/exhibitions/everything-still-awesome.