Lifelong Lego fan Joe Bailey is hoping the world-famous building-brick company likes his “Workshop in a Toolbox” creation so much that they will start making and selling it themselves!
Joe has submitted his impressive model to Lego Ideas – where designs are considered for mass production.
Many of the 18 workshops, studios and chillout rooms in Joe’s toolbox are inspired by his current job at York College as an Art & Design Technician and Learning Assistant and by his time there as a student.
Included are a welding booth, pottery studio, jewellery workshop and woodwork bay, along with a reading area, tuck shop, kitchen and toilets.
The toolbox has quickly surpassed the 1,000 online supporter mark to move beyond the first stage of the Lego Ideas process.
He now has just over a year to meet the next target of 5,000 and, if he then goes on to receive a 10,000-strong backing from the public within six months, his work will be considered at Lego’s Danish headquarters for manufacturing.
On that prospect, an excited Joe admitted: “I’ve been building Lego for as long as I can remember and loved it as a kid, so to become a Lego designer would be a dream come true. They release two or three Lego Ideas sets a year so, every six months or so, they’ll review all the ones that have gathered 10,000 supporters and a small selection of those then make the cut.
“You get a small percentage of the profits and, if it did get on the shelves and I made a bit of money out of it, that would be cool but, just for other people to get joy out of having it themselves as well, would be nice.”
Previously, Joe’s creative talents have seen him produce props, puppets and part of the set for theatre productions of the Little Shop of Horrors.
Unlike many Lego Ideas candidates who submit digital designs using CAD software, Joe chose to physically build his model at York Hackspace – a creative hub in Redeness Street for members of the public to meet up, work on projects and share ideas.
“I think the toolbox probably took me two or three months in total, because I had to buy pieces in,” he explained. “It cost me about £200 to make but, I thought if I wanted to submit it for Lego Ideas, I wanted to get it right and it was worth spending the money and time on it.”
That expenditure appears to have been justified by the public reaction both in person and online, with the toolbox receiving close to 200 positive comments on the Lego Ideas website.
“It feels really good to see the positive comments and a lot of them are from people who I have met at Lego events, who say they saw it at the Doncaster Dome or in Sunderland,” he enthused. “It’s nice that they’ve gone back home and taken the time to support it and quite a few forward it on and ask other people to support it as well.”
Should Joe’s toolbox become available in the shops, it might just become a collectors’ item, too.
“One of the best investments you can make is buying a Lego set, not touching it and, then, selling it on in a few years when it has been discontinued,” he pointed out. “Sometimes, you can make hundreds and hundreds more than the original price.”
If you’d like to help Joe reach the 10,000 supporter-mark for his toolbox, please visit https://ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/c33139a4-08e3-4a3b-af64-621980ffdfc4
You can view more of his work on his @ brickin._.it Instagram page and his @brickin_it YouTube channel
