Big Geekend returns to Guernsey

• Roisin Gauson has this report.

The Big Geekend has returned to Guernsey for its ninth year.

The two-day event celebrates all things weird and wonderful. From a fossils collection, to crochet and costumes, it gives people the opportunity to share their more niche and offbeat interests.

Doors are open from 10am until 4pm on Sunday 25 September in Guernsey Museum.

Entry is free to anyone who enters the costume competition in full fancy dress.

This year's event includes a dance, choreographed during lockdown, from the Guernsey Belles and Broomsticks called To Town on a Pushang.

Attendees are encouraged to dress up. Lucy Bourgaize, who is Secretary of Tol Galen Roleplay Group, says putting on a costume allows people to "become heroes in a fantasy world."

"You get to become your character, you get to dress up and you get to be that and you get to go through and fight monsters and go on adventures and solve puzzles and find treasure and go off and fight for glory," she said.

Over the nine years, the event has become a firm fixture in the island's calendar.

Access and Learning Manager at Guernsey Museum, Jo Dowding, says the idea was initially to "celebrate" people's different passions.

She said: "There's so many individuals and groups in Guernsey that have unusual or offbeat interests and hobbies and collections and we thought that museums lend themselves so well to that kind of thing.

"So it's all about diversity of interests really. We like doing it just as the weather begins to turn in September. It's a lovely kind of back to school weekend."