To start with, I should note that on our journey back from this show, we decided to call it ‘DaddyCon’ because Martin managed to mispronounce it and clearly has some deep-seated issues that he needs to work through. For the purposes of this review, I shall continue calling it DaddyCon.
Anyway, on with the context.
This is a new show that first appeared on our radars about a year earlier – Dave, the organiser, was keen to establish another show in the UK and, quite rightly, one closer to where he lives. He immediately set out making bold claims to do something new with competitions, which naturally made us curious. He’s also a mate who has made the considerable effort to come to the Fen Model Show twice, so it’s only fair we return the favour and trek over to Wales for DaddyCon.
This is where Martin’s Good Ideas come in. We live in Ely (or thereabouts), which is in East Anglia; the show was in Cardiff. According to Google, that’s a drive of 215 miles, taking around 4 hours. Martin thought it was a great idea to drive there and back on the same day. You might gather I wasn’t a fan of this plan. It minimises time for show beers, after all. It also meant getting up and out the door around 5am and home around 9pm. On the plus side, I wasn’t driving.
For those of you planning to attend DaddyCon 2024 from this part of the country: just get a hotel. I suspect we’ll do the same, as 8 hours of driving for 5/6 hours of model show isn’t a great trade.
So, on with the parade of terrible photography:
It was a surprisingly good turnout, as you can see – I think Dave said there were around 500 models on display, which is frankly impressive. The show was, after all, competing with the fact that it was December and people usually have other plans that month, and with the fact that Cardiff had put on its Christmas fair, which made the city pretty busy. (Full disclosure: I’ve only been to Cardiff a couple of times before, so I can’t fairly gauge whether it was actually very busy. It seemed very busy for someone from one of the smallest cities in the UK.)
Going into the show, we weren’t certain how the community would actually respond to a show so late in the year, especially hot on the heels of SMC and Monte. It turns out there’s still a hunger for good shows in the UK. We have no shortage of IPMS shows and the like, but they’re increasingly stale events and often limit how much you can take part if you’re not an IPMS member. Having more model shows in the local calendar that break free from that template can only be a good thing.
Having said that, the show did commit the cardinal sin: no dedicated lighting. You can get away with this if the space has good natural light, but that’s always going to be a challenge in December. Having spoken to Dave about this, it’s high on his list to sort out for next year, and that’s really the key thing: if a show has issues – even tiny things that probably don’t make a significant difference – it should be willing to sort them out and adapt. I have a particular focus on lighting as a key issue for model shows because I believe that shows are just as much (if not more) about giving the painter the opportunity to show off their work to the community as they are about having the models judged.
Anyway, as long as that gets sorted out, I think DaddyCon is in a good place to build up into a great feature of the calendar. There might be some difficulty attracting the painters who regularly attend SMC and Monte (simply because they could well be burnt out by then), but that’s not the whole community of painters. There are a hundred times more painters who never go to shows on the continent but do want local shows that aim for the same vibe and level of prestige.
In terms of other important features of shows, I was pleased to see that there was a bar literally right next to the show hall, so show beers were accessible. This was actually much more important than usual because, while Cardiff does have a huge number of pubs and bars, including many within easy walking distance from the show, the city was, as mentioned, heaving. I didn’t want to have to wander off to find a pub that had seats (because I’m old enough for that to be important). The best show beers are the ones provided on site (usually.)
This leads into our discovery of what seemed to be some kind cultural relic that Britain was pretending never actually happened: Pillars.
When it was time for lunch, a few of us got together to see if we could find somewhere to eat. We prefer a sit-down meal to take up some time because the judging was happening and standing around staring at the judges is just a bit weird. Unfortunately, everywhere seemed to be full – except Pillars.
Pillars is a surreal place. It wouldn’t have felt out of place as the set for a scene in purgatory filmed in the 60s. The food on offer certainly aligned with that. The clientele – to be fair, probably including us – also looked like they belonged there, waiting for the inevitably nothingness of purgatory. The whole model of ordering and receiving food was inconsistent and so inconvenient that it felt like the processes were deliberately designed to get you to reconsider every decision that brought you there… and then the food would confirm it, over and over again as you relentlessly chew your way through food that has somehow distilled the colour ‘grey’ into a flavour.
But you can’t leave. It feels rude, somehow, like you’re judging them (and you are – but it would be rude to make it so obvious). You can’t stay because the queue of people coming in keeps getting longer (where do they come from? Why do they keep coming?). You’re caught in a dully horrifying manifestation of the universe’s entropy, except everyone is Welsh.
In the end, we managed to escape Pillars and returned to the show to do more catching up with painter friends and for the prizegiving. The Ely crew did pretty well:
- Fet: Gold.
- Martin: Gold and Best of Show.
I’m always a bit suspicious of shows that award me gold – like it’s a mark against them for clearly setting their standards too low. I can only assume it’s a bit of imposter syndrome crossed with the fact that, obviously, I know every flaw in everything I do, and perhaps focus on them too heavily. I still thought there was better stuff than mine in silver and bronze.
So, for a first outing, how was DaddyCon? It was surprisingly good. As mentioned earlier, we were a bit curious/apprehensive as to how the time of year would affect it and whether Dave’s bold claims of innovation would really bear out. And while I don’t think it was as innovative as he thought, I do think it made for a great community experience. Curiously, I think the time of year really helped with that and could be something for the show to lean into – I don’t particularly like Christmas, but for a lot of people it’s about family and mushy stuff like that, and the painting scene is, in a lot of ways, like an extended family. Because of this, I think the show has potential to act as a good ‘closing’ event for the year.
Fet Paints 