Written by Simon Scott, Steph Marson, Kirsti Lamai Loane & Heather Sturgess Crowell

“Hey, why don’t we create our own Lego Facebook group?”

Ten little words that started a journey for a handful of like-minded AFOLs nine months ago.

Brick By Brick – A Lego Building Community is a Facebook group born out of friendship and the love of building with Lego. It’s become a carefully curated group that’s all about the positive aspects of Lego and the people who connect with it. The Admins and Moderators work hard to ensure it continues and remains a positive place of inclusivity.

The group itself evolved out of friendship of 20 or so builders who loved taking part in ‘Build Off’ style challenges on a Facebook group. Over two years we all took part in various weekly challenges and came together after being placed in a team to take part in a League Building Challenge. Our own team developed into a proper Facebook family made up of people from the UK, Europe, the US & Australia. We laughed, joked, grieved, supported & encouraged each other in our daily lives and of course Lego, staying connected through messenger groups and a few even meeting each other in person at events or shopping trips.

Earlier this year, for their own reasons, a few felt they could no longer stay in the Facebook group that held the challenges and decided to leave. It was at that point where we initially decided to start our own group – just for us to play in! Word of our group inevitably spread to other friends who in turn asked to join us and eventually it grew to such a size that we collectively agreed to make it a public group under the initial members admin and moderation.

From its public inception we wanted Brick By Brick – A Lego Building Community to provide a positive place where builders of all abilities could take part in challenges, improve their skills, learn from each other and ultimately have fun without having to deal with the more unsavoury elements that can sometimes find their way into social media groups. We provide weekly/monthly challenges open to all abilities, some with polls to declare a winner whilst others just provide constructive feedback or positive comments about the builds themselves.

One of the challenges is Kirsti’s Dirty Dozen – a micro build challenge where you can only use 12 pieces!

Another is a 48 hour Minifigure Vignette Challenge, with the winners of the recent Computer Games themed challenge shown below.

We even host a Little Lego Gallery for our members children to get involved and have their creations posted on display.

Several members, admins & moderators provide prizes for an end of month prize draw too where every build entered in a challenge that month receives a free ticket entry.

The group is carefully moderated to be family friendly with the emphasis on quality not quantity in terms of member numbers. All members are asked to read & accept our group rules before being approved into the group ensuring new joiners are fully aware of the type of group they are asking to join. We have had a few occasions with people taking issue with how we run challenges and had a few inappropriate posts & comments for a family friendly group, but these people have now left. We’re proud to have coaxed multiple new builders out of their comfort zones to place their creations out in front of others, building their confidence along with their skills.

In recent weeks several members have reached out to tell us that the group has become such a positive part of their experience with Lego online and serves as a reminder to why we created this group in the first place. These comments have brought us to the attention of the admins of Brick Alliance who kindly invited us to introduce ourselves to them as another group that shares our beliefs, values and love of Lego.

Please come and say hello on our Facebook Group!