MCM London for Creatives: Why all creatives should attend MCM London
I recently went to MCM London after not having been since 2015 and HOLY MOLY let me tell you it has changed.
I would call myself a little nerdy – but not extremely so, I’m mostly an arty person and have just stared doing convention booths myself at some smaller local cons. So I thought hey, why not go – I can possibly get some inspiration from Artist Alley, maybe have some fun supporting some small businesses and see some fun things. Let me tell you this now, it is nothing like the last time I went and that is such a good thing.
First of all it’s massive now but most importantly – when did MCM become such an amazing place for those of us trying to navigate the creative world as a career?
Despite the fact I was there for the entire con (from open to close on each day) I didn’t see it all. That is because there were three areas that I could not stay away from. So, let’s talk about them and why you creative little beauties should be going to the next convention.
Careers Fair
Now this is the one area of the con that I was the most (pleasantly) surprised at. Back in my day *insert old lady fist shaking here* the point of going to MCM was to see some nerdy things, be with your people and generally have a fun time. Now you’re telling me you can advance your creative career at this thing???
First stop, we have the careers fair stage. Here you can find talks from throughout the industry from people doing the damn thing! From talks about pretty much any part of the games industry you can think of, to panels about forging a career in games when you’re neurodivergent or how to use TTRPG to network (hell yes let my nerdy ass play a DnD adventure to meet some cool like-minded people, teach me your ways).
I only managed to get to three panels here; Video Game Voice Actors Unlimited, Breaking Into Games: Finding Your Own Path and Panel by Panel: Creating Comics and Manga. Bit of a wide variety I know but each had valid reasoning behind it.
The Voice Actors chat had some great industry professionals JD Kelly (Game of Thrones Kingsroad, Fortnite, Diablo Immortal), Sarah Nightingale (Nioh 3, Phasmophobia, Dead by Daylight), & Kit Harrison (Dying Light, Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader, Hunt Showdown) handing out some invaluable advice. From how Discord can help you further your voice acting journey (we don’t gatekeep here, check it out), to pet peeves and getting your voice acting demo reel right. As someone who left acting a long time ago due to my lack of confidence in my physical appearance and knowing that I didn’t fit the ‘typical’ appearance of the time (something I am so happy seems to have progressed since in some ways) I’ve always been interested in voice acting but had no clue where to start. This talk was brilliant, the panellists were genuine people and so open and honest with their advice, I’ve certainly walked away from this with a newfound perspective on the industry and some great tips to help me move forward.
Then we have the talk ‘Breaking Into Games: Finding Your Own Path’ with Charlotte Maxwell, Community and Social Media Manager at Playstack. Now, those of you who know me know that community and social media management is something that I have a lot of passion for and will talk anyone’s ears off about it for free – for everyone else, let me tell you why this talk was brilliant. Community Management and Social Media Management is an integral part of any creative project, it not only helps drive that audience to your project but helps retain that audience and nurture it in a way that ensures not only success but longevity. Charlotte gave great insight into the industry, how to navigate it and how to start a career in that sphere regardless of where you come from.
Last but not least, ‘Panel by Panel: Creating Comics and Manga’ with Elena Vitagliano and Oliver Harud. This was another great panel about not only creating comics and manga but breaking into that sphere starting from scratch. As someone who’s only dabbled in 2D art and is looking into branching out into the world of comics this was an interesting and helpful talk. Both speakers had some great advice to give, special thanks to Elena for letting me ramble about my niece and gave me some great tips with helping her manga drawing aspirations.
Now, for the most surprising and amazing thing (in my opinion) about this area - the Game Anglia ‘meet the game industry’ area. Here you can have 121 conversations and portfolio reviews with people who are doing the thing and know their stuff! Seriously, this is something people pay good money for but these invaluable conversations can be had completely free of charge (included in your MCM ticket). Anyone from Game Producers, Marketers, 2D and 3D artists, Composers, voice actors – the list goes on!
I won’t go into too much detail here (or I would ramble for a very long time) but I went to this area on four separate occasions to speak to people. They even took the time to look at my socials and website and give me pointers on how to make them better (watch out for some updates coming soon). The lovely people running the area certainly gave me the ‘back again?’ look, but I was always welcomed with such kindness and patience by everyone I encountered – I cannot recommend doing this enough and I for sure will be heading back there on my next visit.
Creators Pavilion
Now we go on to Creators Pavilion. Admittedly, I didn’t go to any talks here – as much as I would have loved to there just wasn’t enough time in the day. But the people in this area? Chefs kiss.
Firstly, let’s get my only gripe about this area out of the way - it was poorly managed by MCM. It was hard to find stalls I was looking for (shout out to Deco Girlz for posting a ‘how to find our stall’ video because without this I would have been lost entirely). The rows were cramped, one stall was empty and left to surrounding creators to fill in and make use of (which they did an amazing job at by the way) and in all honesty – it should have been combined with or adjacent to Artist Alley. The cross over between the stalls in Creators Pavilion and Artist Alley is big, with most artists (myself included though I did not table this year) applying for both areas in hope that if they don’t get artists alley they can go to creators pavilion. So with stalls and issues like this, why is the creators area not managed in a similar way and put next to Artist Alley? Only the Con gods know, but enough of that lets speak about the amazing people here and why you should make sure it’s on your visit list.
The people here are their own little community; they have beautiful art and amazing products and are generally lovely people. Let’s take the people in the North Hall in general into this, I’m not talking about resellers to be clear but the creatives and crafters. There were many stalls in here that just should have been with artists over in the south hall. So, don’t sleep on this area and know that any compliments I have for the people in Artist Alley entirely apply to the lovely people I met in the North Hall.
Artist Alley
Okay, so firstly let’s talk about the artists themselves. I cannot stress enough the value you will get as an artist out of simply speaking to the people that run these stalls. Are you shy? A little neurodiverse? Consider yourself to be a bit too socially awkward? Scared you’re going to just go on and on in a neurodivergent ramble? SAME HERE! Biggest tip I would have about this? Nine times out of ten, so are they but they’re also insanely passionate about what they do and so generous with their time. Their willingness to answer any question you have or just talk about this thing they’re doing which they clearly love so much is insurmountable.
I found, as someone who finds it hard to strike up a conversation with strangers, that there were two things that were great conversation starters: stamp rallies and ribbons. 
Now, I have so many thoughts on this I’d like to do a separate blog (or lets face it essay at this point – see prior comment on neurodivergent rambling) but for the large part they are amazing conversation starters. Introduce yourself to that stall when you hand over your stamp cat themed sheet and tell them how many cats you’ve got, thank them for doing a rally on your niche fandom you clearly care about or display your ribbons as a sash of honour and share your finds with them. Not only are you supporting the artists by doing both of these things you are engaging in the community which is extremely important as a creative. I got to meet some genuinely lovely people, get brilliant advise and was welcomed into groups without hesitation.
Now, last but not by any means least, my newly found obsession – Artist Alley panels. At 33 years old I felt like a child again, looking up at these amazing people and thinking how much I wanted to do what they were doing.
I cannot compliment Sarah Miles enough on her hosting skills with these things. I went to three of her panels; Social Media for Artists, Gaming On The Page: Creating Art For (and from) TTRPGs and Friends Like These: The Importance Of Networks For Creators. She somehow mastered the art of taking audience questions whilst still having full control of the situation, being funny whilst insightful - but most importantly she was informative whilst still being entertaining and had my full attention from the first word out of her mouth. It was a pleasure to go to her panels and as someone with mild hosting experience myself, watching her alone was a lesson to learn.
First up was Social Media for Artists with Sunfwer. At 543k followers on Instagram and 779.5k on TikTok (to name a few of her achievements) it’s safe to say that Christina Ji knows what they are talking about when it comes to social media. Not only were they able to impart some valuable advice that I will for sure be implementing into my own social media presence, they were also entertaining, honest and overall very interesting to listen to.
Now, I need to make a confession here, initially I went to this next talk (Gaming On the Page: Creating Art For (and from) TTRPGS) for one reason. Having followed Alex Moore for a long time now and admiring their work on the NOT A BDSM PODCAST Dungeons and Daddies I knew I had to go check out their talk, but man am I glad I did. Joining Alex were Will Kirkby and Aviv Or, two extremely talented artists who I’m glad this talk gave me the opportunity to discover. As someone who taught herself how to draw by listening to podcasts and doing fanart, the words of wisdom on this stage was amazing. It really did have me walking away feeling like I, as a fan artist, could be more one day . . . also it was undeniably hilarious to watch Sarah and Alex try and fail to talk about Dungeons and Daddies in a family friendly manner – I was in stitches.
Last from Sarah (for me) was ‘Friends Like These: The Importance Of Networks For Creators’ with Sarah Gordon, Katy Glover, Rachael Smith and Alison Sampson. As a previously admitted socially anxious and awkward gal, this was a panel I was particularly looking forward to. I won’t ramble on but each of these panellists had yet again more invaluable advise and not only that they were more than accommodating and patient with me as they let me discuss my aspirations with them after their talk, giving some great perspective and help. Yet again a funny, insightful, informative panel that I enjoyed immensely.
Though Sarah isn’t the only one that can put on a good panel on this stage, the final panel I went to was ‘Artist Agony Aunts: A Candid Q&A About Life As An Artist’ with Lisa Baggy, Sophira-Lou and Zombie Octopus. From baby artist's first table advise to the realities of trying to make a career out of conventions and art in general. Again, these panellists were just as inspiring, informative, just as entertaining as their peers and took technical difficulties in their stride. What I must thank this group for the most though is their welcoming and helpful nature. I made a beeline for their tables in artist alley straight after the show and I was there for quite a while! They let me see behind their set up, showed me how they started out, a tour of their stall and why things were set up in certain ways, the business as someone with health issues and generally everything and anything. I very much hope to have future interactions with this group and hope one day I’ll be up to their standard. Side note – thank you for the ribbons and Sophira-Lou I hope you enjoyed Starkid.
Overall, my biggest complaint (apart from the creator pavilion matter) – there were too many amazing panels. There were so many I would have loved to go attend but I had to make the hard choice of what would be more beneficial to me, which lets face it, is a fucking amazing problem to have. I admit now, there were parts of MCM I never saw purely because these areas were so intensely interesting to me. It really made me walk away with that ‘when I grow up I want to be’ feeling. Though let’s face it, I’m not a child, I’m 33. So let’s see how far I can go with this and do the damned thing, I’m putting it out there now that one day I want to prove myself and get to a level where I can earn a seat on one of those stages – because the things I have taken away from this experience were so awe inspiring, I can think of no higher goal than being in a position to be able to impart even a fraction of the wisdom I gained from this experience to future con goers.
If there’s any particular MCM matter you want to hear more about, feel free to contact me and if this is something that people want to read I do have plans for more. Thank you for listening (no, reading?) the ramblings of my mind. I admit I intended for this to be a reel but then realised I simply had too much to say!
Until next time, because I'm going to keep on writing - make the thing so it exists and then make it good, right? I hope I can look back on this in years to come and cringe, so let's all embrace that I'm learning how to do all of this on my own and we can all laugh and look back at it together with future Danie.
Danie Leigh Art