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No Nine Worlds For Twenty-Nineteen…

Published Tue, 01 Jan 2019 10:00:50 -0600

Nine Worlds is an annual geek convention held in London every year with a keen emphasis on diversity and accessibility. Originally held in and around Hounslow and Heathrow it has, in recent years, moved down the Piccadilly Line to Hammersmith. It is one of my favourite conventions I've attended, by dint of the way in which it forced you to see the world – and fandom – differently, with new eyes and a new appreciation.

But for 2019, that will have to be on hold.

Bleeding Cool reported from last year's show that Nine Worlds was to be dissolved and reincorporated as a non-profit show, with a new management team, hopefully, for 2019.

Well, that hope has been put on pause for a year. Just before Christmas, the following notice was posted;

Firstly, we apologise for the lateness of this announcement and would like to thank you for your patience. The new governance committee was formed on 19th December, after the original team bidding to take over unexpectedly withdrew. The new committee, which has only had the ability and authority to communicate with the public since yesterday, is now working hard to transition all legalities, assets and data from former Director Dan Whitson in an orderly and above all transparent fashion.

The handover process is underway but is only in the very early stages. A new team is taking over, and we hope to bring you an awesome event in 2020. Yes, you read that right. Unfortunately, our hold on the Novotel for 2019 was released last month. We have decided that rather than scramble to pull together a sub-par event for 2019 from scratch while also getting a new team set up, we would rather focus our efforts on sorting out Nine Worlds as a whole and bring you an improved event in 2020.

We believe Nine Worlds is a unique event and too precious not to keep going, but we also know it has areas in serious need of improvement, particularly around inclusion of people of colour. We want to retain all the best elements of Nine Worlds and fix the bits that don't work so well. We recognise that's going to take time and hard work. However, we haven't ruled out some sort of small, one day interim event in 2019.

Again, it is very early days, we've not yet allocated roles, taken over the legal entity of Nine Worlds Ltd, or explored the financial challenges ahead, but we have the will, enthusiasm and motivation to do so in the coming months.

This was followed today with the clarification,

We would like to clarify our recent statement that the previous team "unexpectedly withdrew". We did not mean to imply that the previous bidding team were in any way responsible for the lack of communication, and we are sorry for giving that impression.

We would also like to make it clear that the majority of us are Nine Worlds attendees, not previous management staff; none of us know the full circumstances of what happened w

All of this has happened at an awkward time of year, so we thank you for your patience while we get ourselves established. In due course, we will be throwing open the channels of communication for feedback (both in general and specific to the 2018 con) and for more volunteers to help put together Nine Worlds 2020. Watch this space!

We'll be watching, and I would like to underscore the specialness of Nine Worlds. I'll be back, whatever year they choose…