Posted: 20 November 2007 at 9:32pm | IP Logged

Yes, it's finally here! We are pleased to announce that Auto Assembly 2008 has been confirmed for Saturday 2nd August 2008 and will once again be taking place at the Clarendon Suites right here in Birmingham, England. After taking a much needed year off, we're back and hoping to bring you the biggest and best Auto Assembly convention EVER with loads of activities, and what could well be our biggest guest line-up to-date...

This time we're running the event to raise funds for Help A Local Child (formerly known as Cash For Kids) - a local children's charity founded by BRMB radio station - through a charity auction and raffle and any excess funds left over from the convention.

Help a Local Child was launched in 1994 with a commitment to helping the children and young people of the West Midlands, who experience the negative effects of poverty, abuse, neglect, homelessness, violence, crime, illness and disability. There are many children in and around the Birmingham area who are carers for their own parents or who are indirect victims of domestic violence or suffer daily pain due to illness. In this world of glamour and gain, these are the children that BRMB want to help. Their focus is local fundraising, with all money raised being awarded locally and really benefiting our community. With the help and support of their listeners, local celebrities, corporate partners, volunteers, and their employees, the fundraising year on year will help more and more children in the area, enabling them to achieve dreams and ambitions they would never have thought possible.

Back to next year's convention and we're going to be having the usual mix of activities - plenty of dealers, video screenings, a bar or two(!), toy and art displays, competitions and guest talks. We're hoping to have our usual mix of UK comic guests including all of our "regulars", another voice actor (who we will announce as soon as possible) but this time we want to have the biggest guest line-up ever at a British Transformers convention!

In 2005 Auto Assembly was the biggest ever held in Europe with 409 fans attending and last year we had 400 attendees and we are confident that we're going to smash the European record next year. Every year we have a fantastic amount of interest for the convention with fans booking up from across Europe and as far afield as Australia and America!

We'll be producing another issue of our fanzine, The Cybertronian Times, producing another one of our infamous "goodie bags" with plenty of great free gifts including two more convention exclusive postcards, and much more!

Anyway, we hope to see many of you there next year and feel free to get in touch if you want to know more! There will be full information about next year's convention going on the website over the coming days and weeks and bookings will be open in the next week or so!

Simon and Sven
Auto Assembly 2008

web: www.autoassembly.org.uk
enquiries@autoassembly.org.uk
forum: http://autoassembly.proboards7.com

Posted: 20 November 2007 at 10:25pm | IP Logged

Ticket prices are £16 for adults and £8 for children - only a slight increase from AA2006 even though our venue cost has almost doubled!!

We've confirmed our first two guests already (see the website!) and I'm waiting to hear from a LOT more and we're entering into talks with our main voice actor so things are looking pretty good already!

Simon

Posted: 21 November 2007 at 12:43am | IP Logged

Fantastic stuff; great that you're back in action man

August 2008? Plan I must!

Posted: 22 November 2007 at 12:06am | IP Logged

Blaster wrote: Specimen-17 wrote: Yigal wrote: For me, it's only 8 hours driving     Bah! You know how I got to the last AA? Started from Amsterdam, drove to Calais, got the ferry to Dover, train to London, subway across London, train to Birmingham and then had to walk with Perceptor and Smokesniper to the hotel, which was a couple of miles from New Street. your point being?

It's why he was too tired to get a round in, I presume.

Posted: 22 November 2007 at 3:35pm | IP Logged

That's because you didn't join in with our apres event pool playing and merryment!

I say this year we have the TF.net poker tournament, with the grand prize being an Anime Astrotrain donated by one Mr C.Pringle!