Help Free Exhibit Inspire Creativity in Children
Donation protected
FUNDING NEEDED TO ACQUIRE SPACE FOR AN EXCITING, MUSEUM-QUALITY CHILDREN’S EXHIBIT ACCESSIBLE OVER THE INTERNET FOR FREE WORLDWIDE
First and foremost, we are not trying to raise funds for a business that will be generating any revenue. The mission of Brick City Lights LLC is to raise funds to acquire and maintain the space needed to greatly expand an existing breathtakingly unique, museum-quality, internet exhibit that is meant to instill and encourage creativity, imagination, curiosity, and inventiveness in children. If you’re a parent, grandparent, or teacher of any subject at any grade level, you’re already fully aware of the positive impact that these qualities have on a child’s development.
This exhibit is freely available over the internet as a virtual exhibit to inspire and motivate children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is not meant to benefit children in only a single city, state, province, or country, but rather to benefit all children worldwide. Numerous other museums around the world have also recently recognized the importance of sharing portions of their exhibits on the internet. So the creators of this exhibit are not alone in understanding the importance and value of using the internet as a free delivery system of museum-quality exhibits that can enrich and inspire a dramatically larger number of children around the world. A small sampling of these museums include The Louvre, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, The British Museum, Guggenheim, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Van Gogh Museum, Boston Children's Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, Rijksmuseum, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Royal Alberta Museum, National Women's History Museum, Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, and the NASA Glenn Research Center.
The current exhibit which is already available to view on YouTube and Pinterest is already the largest LEGO® brick city theme exhibit that is fully LED lit in the world. LEGO® bricks are the most popular hobby building material in the world and are enjoyed by both children and adults. The new exhibit which Brick City Lights needs space to build will be six to eight times the current size thereby making it the size of an extremely large exhibit that you would see in a major metropolitan museum. Brick City Lights already owns nearly all of the LEGO® City theme kits that have been released since their inception 40 years ago. Over 80% of the kits currently owned aren’t in the existing exhibit, but will be in the new museum-quality exhibit which will continue to be the largest and most complete fully LED lit LEGO® city theme exhibit in the world . So we’re definitely not raising funds to purchase more LEGO® kits. We are simply replacing what was to be the sole funding source for the new exhibit space that Brick City Lights has permanently lost – revenue from ads that can no longer appear with their videos on YouTube because the video content is made primarily for children, and advertising is no longer allowed to accompany video content that is made for children. That lost revenue from YouTube ads would have allowed Brick City Lights LLC to acquire the space they needed. I will elaborate more about that later.
In addition to containing nearly all of the LEGO® City kits ever released and being fully LED lit, the vastly expanded LEGO® city exhibit will contain a number of the owners' unique artistic creations, imaginative and gorgeous detailing, thoughtful organization, and will take the world of LEGO® brick building to an entirely new level of imagination, inventiveness, and creativity that children thrive on.
As parents of four adult sons and four grandchildren, my wife and I developed a passion to engage young minds and inspire creativity and imagination in children a long time ago. We deeply believe that the goal of inspiring wholesome imagination and creativity in children is a very worthy goal as it leads to greater levels of achievement in their later years.
WHY EXPOSURE TO A WIDE RANGE OF ART, MUSIC, CRAFTS, AND MACHINES IS SO IMPORTANT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY, IMAGINATION, CURIOSTY, AND INVENTIVENESS IN CHILDREN
When children grow up surrounded by various forms of art, music, crafts, tools, building materials, and machines, they grow to higher levels of awareness and develop an interest in becoming more creative. Children benefit from in-depth exploration and long-term open-ended constructive projects that foster creativity, wholesome entertainment, curiosity, ingenuity, inspiration, and creative learning. These activities help today’s children become the innovators of the future. Additionally, when curiosity is instilled in children, their desire to learn new information and ideas is increased. So it is important to continually expose children to new activities that will nurture their curiosity and trigger their motivation and desire to learn.
Children also thrive on creative activities and interesting ideas that support the growth of their self-confidence in becoming more creative. When children venture down different avenues of positive self-expression in mediums that they didn’t know they could be successful at, they also build their self-confidence and self-esteem.
The current LEGO® brick city exhibit and the new greatly expanded exhibit are a natural to spur children to increase the limits of their creativity and imagination. Over the years, the LEGO® Group has grown to become the largest toy manufacturer in the world for these very same reasons, so the unique exhibits constructed by Brick City Lights LLC are something that already has very strong appeal to an extremely large audience of children around the world.
Access to museums and art exhibits is something that many of us living in large metropolitan areas often take for granted. Regardless of whether people have to limit their choices due to Covid-19 or not, there are hundreds of millions of children around the world who will never have the opportunity to visit museums and art exhibits let alone experience the magic of seeing a very large scale LEGO® city, and then to use those enriching experiences to arouse and nurture their imagination and creativity. For this reason, we don’t want this exhibit to be built as a traditional brick and mortar museum exhibit so that only those lucky enough to live near our community can come and pay to see it in person, but rather for all children around the world to see it up close and for free directly from their homes over the internet just as our current exhibit is already displayed. This is why your contribution is so vitally important right now.
The world will eventually get past our current Covid-19 crisis along with the devastating loss of life and the disruption it has brought to most people’s lives; however, on the brighter side, life in the time of Covid-19 has also brought new opportunities for learning and entertainment choices which will endure long after Covid-19. Brick City Lights believes that their museum-quality, one-of-a-kind LEGO® brick city exhibit which is free of advertising and free to watch wherever there is an internet connection will be one of these meaningful new activities that will foster creativity, imagination, curiosity, and inventiveness, and will encourage children to express their imagination in positive ways for decades to come. As I mentioned earlier, hundreds of other museums around the world who are now making their exhibits available on the internet appear to share this same public-spirited thinking.
THE AMAZING RESULTS FROM THE FIRST FULL YEAR OF DISPLAYING THE INITIAL EXHIBIT ON YOUTUBE, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A FREELY ACCESSIBLE MUSEUM-QUALITY LEGO® EXHIBIT FOR CHILDREN IN THE FUTURE
Brick City Lights is now finishing the first year of having the videos of their initial small 274 base plate prototype LEGO® town exhibit on YouTube. During this period of time, the videos of the exhibit have already been watched over 400,000 times by visitors from 81 different countries around the world. But even more importantly, slightly more than 75% of their total YouTube video views were from people who reside outside of the United States. One of the goals has always been and will continue to be to enrich the lives of children regardless of their location. These viewer statistics furnished by YouTube mean that Brick City Lights is achieving this vitally important goal.
Because of the vast geographical dispersion of the viewers, and the success that they're experiencing in reaching viewers around the globe, we are reaching out worldwide in our Go Fund Me campaign. Like many family-owned small businesses around the world, even in the best of times, it is next to impossible for a small family-owned business to self-fund a truly unique and enriching family-oriented attraction that is free for everyone around the world to enjoy over the internet. This is why we need your donation now.
OUR FAMILY’S 40 YEAR HISTORY OF BUILDING LEGO® BRICK EXHIBITS
As parents of four adult sons, our family first began building LEGO® towns in 1980 when LEGO® first introduced the LEGO® City theme. Collectively with our adult children who are active builders of our exhibit, we have well over 100 years of creative design and building experience. Over the years we’d add new kits and the town would continue to grow and become more detailed than the previous build. Then in 2018 we made the decision to dramatically expand our town to cover a 274 LEGO® base plate surface area. At that time we also added gorgeous miniature LED lighting throughout the entire town transforming it into an incredibly realistic exhibit that was breathtaking to experience. That exhibit which was finished in late 2019 was the first very large scale LEGO® brick town exhibit that was not only highly organized and finely detailed, but also the first LEGO® brick city exhibit that was also fully LED lit throughout the entire display.
Once we realized just how wonderful an exhibit like ours could be for others to enjoy and how it could inspire and nurture the positive traits of creativity, curiosity, ingenuity, inventiveness, and wholesome imagination in children, we proceeded to form Brick City Lights LLC and then to purchase nearly all of the remaining LEGO® kits that had come out over the 40 year period between 1980 and 2021 and which would be suitable for the next town exhibit. As of March of 2021, Brick City Lights now owns over 1,300 different LEGO® product kits that will be in the next exhibit. This huge investment also meant that we needed to acquire the necessary space to build the new display which will be six to eight times larger than the current exhibit.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE NEXT EXHIBIT AND HOW THE IMAGERY WILL HAVE AN INSPIRATIONAL IMPACT ON CHILDREN TO FOSTER THEIR OWN CREATIVITY, IMAGINATION, CURIOSITY, AND INVENTIVENESS
In addition to seeing imaginative custom LEGO® brick creations, viewers of the photos and videos of the unique exhibit will be able to explore the full 40-year history and evolution of LEGO® City kits and the intricate artistry of over 1,300 unique LEGO® brick kits all in one enormous, awe-inspiring exhibit. But even more importantly, the plans don’t stop there. Of noteworthy significance is the fact that unlike most museum exhibits which remain stagnant and in their original form for decades, our family will continue to purchase new releases of LEGO® brick kits and donate them to Brick City Lights so that the exhibit will continue to expand both in size and beautiful detail.
Also of major importance is the fact that in the next giant exhibit, Brick City Lights won’t just be showing hundreds of videos and thousands of photos of the finished exhibit, but will also be showing the planning and diagramming of the exhibit; all of the creative and imaginative ways that the table tops are constructed so that they are easily expandable and stay perfectly level for decades, how the table top is prepared for easily concealable USB wiring; the variety of USB power sources, dimmers and hubs that are used; the variety of different miniature USB lighting used; the creative and decorative enhancements that are incorporated both inside and outside all of the buildings and houses; and the botanical and lighting enhancements that turn the finished exhibit into a truly magical experience for children and adults of all ages to be inspired by and most certainly to enjoy.
One of the goals is to have the LEGO® brick town exhibit be a model for green cities of tomorrow representing the future of what our planet needs for long-term survival. To increase the awareness of the benefits of renewable clean energy, the town will include seven motorized LEGO® wind turbine kits along with twenty custom-built large LEGO® brick solar panels that will make up the simulated renewable energy generation for the entire town. Climate change is affecting not only people, but also animals, fish, and all of the ecosystems throughout the world. This clean energy section of the town is meant to draw attention to these facts and how further commitments to more clean energy will help to preserve our beautiful planet for generations to come.
The exhibit will include over 1,300 unique LEGO® kits including sixteen different remote controlled LEGO® trains and two large train yards for both the freight and passenger trains; two large airports with dozens of planes, jets, and helicopters; hundreds of buildings and houses; an incredible amusement park with motorized rides; hundreds of cars, trucks, and boats; the entire beautiful winter village collection; a large farm with crops and a stable with numerous horses; a multi-story tall water park slide; an enormous recreation park with adjacent camp grounds; a large dirt track for dune buggies and motorcycles; a sprawling construction site that includes all of the LEGO® construction vehicles and cranes; a large Chinatown area containing the majority of the large Ninjago sets which portray gorgeous Asian architecture; the beautiful Disney Castle; an incredibly large population of over 5,000 citizens of different ages, genders, and cultural diversity at work, play, and in a variety of social interactions; hundreds of animals and birds; and on the far outskirts of town will be the giant Harry Potter Hogwart’s castle along with the stunning clock and astronomy towers.
A more detailed description of the different areas of the town along with a complete list of all of the different LEGO® kits that will be incorporated into the exhibit is available for download on the Brick City Lights web site.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COMPANY'S INITIAL BUSINESS PLAN THAT THEY NOW NEED YOUR HELP
When Brick City Lights decided to dramatically expand their LEGO® exhibit in 2018 and to make it a breathtaking exhibit by adding miniature LED lighting throughout, the initial business plan was that our family would continue to purchase all of the LEGO® products that are released each year on our own which we have done, and then earn an income from the typical short ads that are normally seen at the beginning of YouTube videos. That revenue would have allowed the company to acquire the space for their next major expansion in 2021. No sooner was the building the current exhibit finished in late 2019 that YouTube entered into a 170 million dollar settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over numerous violations of the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA). In a nutshell, COPPA prohibits ads from being shown on videos that are clearly made for children like our videos are. The concern of the FTC was that children may be exposed to ads meant for adults, click on those ads, and then furnish personal information to the advertisers. As a result of the financial settlement with the FTC, YouTube shifted the responsibility of labeling videos as “made for children” to the creator of the video who posted it on YouTube. If the creator of a video posted on YouTube that is clearly targeting an audience of children does not label their video(s) as “made for children” so that YouTube won’t insert short ads, the FTC can impose a fine of $42,000 per incident on the creator of the video, and not YouTube.
Although many adults also enjoy seeing the videos, because the exhibit is clearly directed towards children, Brick City Lights has had to label all of the videos as “made for children” and can therefore no longer include any ads which would allow revenues to be earned regardless of the age of the viewer.
Even though the company can no longer earn revenue from ads inserted at the beginning of the YouTube videos which would have allowed them to acquire the space they needed for expansion, the mission to inspire creativity, curiosity, inventiveness, and imagination in children around the world hasn’t changed in the slightest. Only the financial path to acquire the space needed for the greatly expanded exhibit has changed and this is why we are asking for your donation. Brick City Lights doesn’t have the patrons and donors that large museums are fortunate to have so the only remaining avenue to acquire funds for the space to make this wonderful exhibit a reality for children will be through contributions to our Go Fund Me campaign. When combined together with the six figure investment that our family has already made in this museum-quality exhibit, and the future purchases of LEGO® kits that our family will continue to make and contribute to Brick City Lights, we will all be leaving a lasting and meaningful gift to all of the children around the world for decades to come.
Like all of the other LEGO® collectors and builders around the world, we know that there is a limit to any single family’s financial resources, the space that they have available, and the time and creativity that they have to devote to creating a highly detailed and fully lit exhibit of this magnitude. Unless the company is able to acquire the space they need, it is highly doubtful that anyone else will ever accomplish what Brick City Lights is attempting to do right now, and then making it available for free online for all of the children around the world to enjoy and to be inspired by. As one of the largest collectors of new LEGO® kits in the world, this family owned business is thoroughly equipped and highly qualified to make this next exhibit a reality for children to enjoy.
THANK YOU FOR HELPING BRICK CITY LIGHTS INSTILL CREATIVITY, INVENTIVENESS, CURIOSITY, AND WHOLESOME IMAGINATION IN CHILDREN AROUND THE WORLD!
My wife and I already know how enriching the content of the videos and photos are to the creative growth of children. From the beginning we’ve also believed that other parents, grandparents, and teachers will believe as we do that the greatly expanded museum-quality exhibit will be a very worthwhile project for the development of curiosity, imagination, creativity, and inventiveness in children around the world. But, your support at this time to acquire the space to make this free museum exhibit a reality for children around the world via the internet is definitely needed. My wife and I sincerely hope that you will make a donation and would like to thank you in advance for your very meaningful contribution!
Additional Information
For more information about Brick City Lights LLC, you can visit their web site at www.BrickCityLights.com
Videos of the current small exhibit can be viewed on you tube at www.youtube.com/c/brickcitylights
Photos of the current small exhibit can be viewed on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.com/BrickCityLights
Contributions or gifts to Brick City Lights LLC are not tax deductible. Contributions received shall be considered gifts to Brick City Lights LLC which is a for profit family-owned corporation even though the company longer has any sources of income from their YouTube children’s videos which are shown worldwide without charge. Contributors will not receive any goods or services in exchange for their gifts. At the discretion of Brick City Lights LLC, gifts received will be used for the acquisition of space for the expansion of the new exhibit; it’s maintenance, utilities, and taxes; construction of the custom table tops which are used to support the exhibit; electrical work and supplies; awareness advertising, and the costs associated with the Go Fund Me campaign. We are not raising money for the purchase of any LEGO® brand products which our family will continue to purchase and donate to Brick City Lights LLC just as we’ve always done in the past.
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO® Group which does not sponsor, authorize, or endorse the YouTube videos, the web site, the Pinterest site, or the Go Fund Me campaign.
Several views of the existing prototype exhibit at night are below. Photos and videos of the current exhibit during the day are available on the company's YouTube and Pinterest sites.
The next museum quality exhibit will be six times larger than what is shown in the photos below which don't even include the current entire exhibit!
Creativity is learned and nurtured both at school and at home.
First and foremost, we are not trying to raise funds for a business that will be generating any revenue. The mission of Brick City Lights LLC is to raise funds to acquire and maintain the space needed to greatly expand an existing breathtakingly unique, museum-quality, internet exhibit that is meant to instill and encourage creativity, imagination, curiosity, and inventiveness in children. If you’re a parent, grandparent, or teacher of any subject at any grade level, you’re already fully aware of the positive impact that these qualities have on a child’s development.
This exhibit is freely available over the internet as a virtual exhibit to inspire and motivate children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is not meant to benefit children in only a single city, state, province, or country, but rather to benefit all children worldwide. Numerous other museums around the world have also recently recognized the importance of sharing portions of their exhibits on the internet. So the creators of this exhibit are not alone in understanding the importance and value of using the internet as a free delivery system of museum-quality exhibits that can enrich and inspire a dramatically larger number of children around the world. A small sampling of these museums include The Louvre, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, The British Museum, Guggenheim, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Van Gogh Museum, Boston Children's Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, Rijksmuseum, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Royal Alberta Museum, National Women's History Museum, Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, and the NASA Glenn Research Center.
The current exhibit which is already available to view on YouTube and Pinterest is already the largest LEGO® brick city theme exhibit that is fully LED lit in the world. LEGO® bricks are the most popular hobby building material in the world and are enjoyed by both children and adults. The new exhibit which Brick City Lights needs space to build will be six to eight times the current size thereby making it the size of an extremely large exhibit that you would see in a major metropolitan museum. Brick City Lights already owns nearly all of the LEGO® City theme kits that have been released since their inception 40 years ago. Over 80% of the kits currently owned aren’t in the existing exhibit, but will be in the new museum-quality exhibit which will continue to be the largest and most complete fully LED lit LEGO® city theme exhibit in the world . So we’re definitely not raising funds to purchase more LEGO® kits. We are simply replacing what was to be the sole funding source for the new exhibit space that Brick City Lights has permanently lost – revenue from ads that can no longer appear with their videos on YouTube because the video content is made primarily for children, and advertising is no longer allowed to accompany video content that is made for children. That lost revenue from YouTube ads would have allowed Brick City Lights LLC to acquire the space they needed. I will elaborate more about that later.
In addition to containing nearly all of the LEGO® City kits ever released and being fully LED lit, the vastly expanded LEGO® city exhibit will contain a number of the owners' unique artistic creations, imaginative and gorgeous detailing, thoughtful organization, and will take the world of LEGO® brick building to an entirely new level of imagination, inventiveness, and creativity that children thrive on.
As parents of four adult sons and four grandchildren, my wife and I developed a passion to engage young minds and inspire creativity and imagination in children a long time ago. We deeply believe that the goal of inspiring wholesome imagination and creativity in children is a very worthy goal as it leads to greater levels of achievement in their later years.
WHY EXPOSURE TO A WIDE RANGE OF ART, MUSIC, CRAFTS, AND MACHINES IS SO IMPORTANT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY, IMAGINATION, CURIOSTY, AND INVENTIVENESS IN CHILDREN
When children grow up surrounded by various forms of art, music, crafts, tools, building materials, and machines, they grow to higher levels of awareness and develop an interest in becoming more creative. Children benefit from in-depth exploration and long-term open-ended constructive projects that foster creativity, wholesome entertainment, curiosity, ingenuity, inspiration, and creative learning. These activities help today’s children become the innovators of the future. Additionally, when curiosity is instilled in children, their desire to learn new information and ideas is increased. So it is important to continually expose children to new activities that will nurture their curiosity and trigger their motivation and desire to learn.
Children also thrive on creative activities and interesting ideas that support the growth of their self-confidence in becoming more creative. When children venture down different avenues of positive self-expression in mediums that they didn’t know they could be successful at, they also build their self-confidence and self-esteem.
The current LEGO® brick city exhibit and the new greatly expanded exhibit are a natural to spur children to increase the limits of their creativity and imagination. Over the years, the LEGO® Group has grown to become the largest toy manufacturer in the world for these very same reasons, so the unique exhibits constructed by Brick City Lights LLC are something that already has very strong appeal to an extremely large audience of children around the world.
Access to museums and art exhibits is something that many of us living in large metropolitan areas often take for granted. Regardless of whether people have to limit their choices due to Covid-19 or not, there are hundreds of millions of children around the world who will never have the opportunity to visit museums and art exhibits let alone experience the magic of seeing a very large scale LEGO® city, and then to use those enriching experiences to arouse and nurture their imagination and creativity. For this reason, we don’t want this exhibit to be built as a traditional brick and mortar museum exhibit so that only those lucky enough to live near our community can come and pay to see it in person, but rather for all children around the world to see it up close and for free directly from their homes over the internet just as our current exhibit is already displayed. This is why your contribution is so vitally important right now.
The world will eventually get past our current Covid-19 crisis along with the devastating loss of life and the disruption it has brought to most people’s lives; however, on the brighter side, life in the time of Covid-19 has also brought new opportunities for learning and entertainment choices which will endure long after Covid-19. Brick City Lights believes that their museum-quality, one-of-a-kind LEGO® brick city exhibit which is free of advertising and free to watch wherever there is an internet connection will be one of these meaningful new activities that will foster creativity, imagination, curiosity, and inventiveness, and will encourage children to express their imagination in positive ways for decades to come. As I mentioned earlier, hundreds of other museums around the world who are now making their exhibits available on the internet appear to share this same public-spirited thinking.
THE AMAZING RESULTS FROM THE FIRST FULL YEAR OF DISPLAYING THE INITIAL EXHIBIT ON YOUTUBE, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A FREELY ACCESSIBLE MUSEUM-QUALITY LEGO® EXHIBIT FOR CHILDREN IN THE FUTURE
Brick City Lights is now finishing the first year of having the videos of their initial small 274 base plate prototype LEGO® town exhibit on YouTube. During this period of time, the videos of the exhibit have already been watched over 400,000 times by visitors from 81 different countries around the world. But even more importantly, slightly more than 75% of their total YouTube video views were from people who reside outside of the United States. One of the goals has always been and will continue to be to enrich the lives of children regardless of their location. These viewer statistics furnished by YouTube mean that Brick City Lights is achieving this vitally important goal.
Because of the vast geographical dispersion of the viewers, and the success that they're experiencing in reaching viewers around the globe, we are reaching out worldwide in our Go Fund Me campaign. Like many family-owned small businesses around the world, even in the best of times, it is next to impossible for a small family-owned business to self-fund a truly unique and enriching family-oriented attraction that is free for everyone around the world to enjoy over the internet. This is why we need your donation now.
OUR FAMILY’S 40 YEAR HISTORY OF BUILDING LEGO® BRICK EXHIBITS
As parents of four adult sons, our family first began building LEGO® towns in 1980 when LEGO® first introduced the LEGO® City theme. Collectively with our adult children who are active builders of our exhibit, we have well over 100 years of creative design and building experience. Over the years we’d add new kits and the town would continue to grow and become more detailed than the previous build. Then in 2018 we made the decision to dramatically expand our town to cover a 274 LEGO® base plate surface area. At that time we also added gorgeous miniature LED lighting throughout the entire town transforming it into an incredibly realistic exhibit that was breathtaking to experience. That exhibit which was finished in late 2019 was the first very large scale LEGO® brick town exhibit that was not only highly organized and finely detailed, but also the first LEGO® brick city exhibit that was also fully LED lit throughout the entire display.
Once we realized just how wonderful an exhibit like ours could be for others to enjoy and how it could inspire and nurture the positive traits of creativity, curiosity, ingenuity, inventiveness, and wholesome imagination in children, we proceeded to form Brick City Lights LLC and then to purchase nearly all of the remaining LEGO® kits that had come out over the 40 year period between 1980 and 2021 and which would be suitable for the next town exhibit. As of March of 2021, Brick City Lights now owns over 1,300 different LEGO® product kits that will be in the next exhibit. This huge investment also meant that we needed to acquire the necessary space to build the new display which will be six to eight times larger than the current exhibit.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE NEXT EXHIBIT AND HOW THE IMAGERY WILL HAVE AN INSPIRATIONAL IMPACT ON CHILDREN TO FOSTER THEIR OWN CREATIVITY, IMAGINATION, CURIOSITY, AND INVENTIVENESS
In addition to seeing imaginative custom LEGO® brick creations, viewers of the photos and videos of the unique exhibit will be able to explore the full 40-year history and evolution of LEGO® City kits and the intricate artistry of over 1,300 unique LEGO® brick kits all in one enormous, awe-inspiring exhibit. But even more importantly, the plans don’t stop there. Of noteworthy significance is the fact that unlike most museum exhibits which remain stagnant and in their original form for decades, our family will continue to purchase new releases of LEGO® brick kits and donate them to Brick City Lights so that the exhibit will continue to expand both in size and beautiful detail.
Also of major importance is the fact that in the next giant exhibit, Brick City Lights won’t just be showing hundreds of videos and thousands of photos of the finished exhibit, but will also be showing the planning and diagramming of the exhibit; all of the creative and imaginative ways that the table tops are constructed so that they are easily expandable and stay perfectly level for decades, how the table top is prepared for easily concealable USB wiring; the variety of USB power sources, dimmers and hubs that are used; the variety of different miniature USB lighting used; the creative and decorative enhancements that are incorporated both inside and outside all of the buildings and houses; and the botanical and lighting enhancements that turn the finished exhibit into a truly magical experience for children and adults of all ages to be inspired by and most certainly to enjoy.
One of the goals is to have the LEGO® brick town exhibit be a model for green cities of tomorrow representing the future of what our planet needs for long-term survival. To increase the awareness of the benefits of renewable clean energy, the town will include seven motorized LEGO® wind turbine kits along with twenty custom-built large LEGO® brick solar panels that will make up the simulated renewable energy generation for the entire town. Climate change is affecting not only people, but also animals, fish, and all of the ecosystems throughout the world. This clean energy section of the town is meant to draw attention to these facts and how further commitments to more clean energy will help to preserve our beautiful planet for generations to come.
The exhibit will include over 1,300 unique LEGO® kits including sixteen different remote controlled LEGO® trains and two large train yards for both the freight and passenger trains; two large airports with dozens of planes, jets, and helicopters; hundreds of buildings and houses; an incredible amusement park with motorized rides; hundreds of cars, trucks, and boats; the entire beautiful winter village collection; a large farm with crops and a stable with numerous horses; a multi-story tall water park slide; an enormous recreation park with adjacent camp grounds; a large dirt track for dune buggies and motorcycles; a sprawling construction site that includes all of the LEGO® construction vehicles and cranes; a large Chinatown area containing the majority of the large Ninjago sets which portray gorgeous Asian architecture; the beautiful Disney Castle; an incredibly large population of over 5,000 citizens of different ages, genders, and cultural diversity at work, play, and in a variety of social interactions; hundreds of animals and birds; and on the far outskirts of town will be the giant Harry Potter Hogwart’s castle along with the stunning clock and astronomy towers.
A more detailed description of the different areas of the town along with a complete list of all of the different LEGO® kits that will be incorporated into the exhibit is available for download on the Brick City Lights web site.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COMPANY'S INITIAL BUSINESS PLAN THAT THEY NOW NEED YOUR HELP
When Brick City Lights decided to dramatically expand their LEGO® exhibit in 2018 and to make it a breathtaking exhibit by adding miniature LED lighting throughout, the initial business plan was that our family would continue to purchase all of the LEGO® products that are released each year on our own which we have done, and then earn an income from the typical short ads that are normally seen at the beginning of YouTube videos. That revenue would have allowed the company to acquire the space for their next major expansion in 2021. No sooner was the building the current exhibit finished in late 2019 that YouTube entered into a 170 million dollar settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over numerous violations of the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA). In a nutshell, COPPA prohibits ads from being shown on videos that are clearly made for children like our videos are. The concern of the FTC was that children may be exposed to ads meant for adults, click on those ads, and then furnish personal information to the advertisers. As a result of the financial settlement with the FTC, YouTube shifted the responsibility of labeling videos as “made for children” to the creator of the video who posted it on YouTube. If the creator of a video posted on YouTube that is clearly targeting an audience of children does not label their video(s) as “made for children” so that YouTube won’t insert short ads, the FTC can impose a fine of $42,000 per incident on the creator of the video, and not YouTube.
Although many adults also enjoy seeing the videos, because the exhibit is clearly directed towards children, Brick City Lights has had to label all of the videos as “made for children” and can therefore no longer include any ads which would allow revenues to be earned regardless of the age of the viewer.
Even though the company can no longer earn revenue from ads inserted at the beginning of the YouTube videos which would have allowed them to acquire the space they needed for expansion, the mission to inspire creativity, curiosity, inventiveness, and imagination in children around the world hasn’t changed in the slightest. Only the financial path to acquire the space needed for the greatly expanded exhibit has changed and this is why we are asking for your donation. Brick City Lights doesn’t have the patrons and donors that large museums are fortunate to have so the only remaining avenue to acquire funds for the space to make this wonderful exhibit a reality for children will be through contributions to our Go Fund Me campaign. When combined together with the six figure investment that our family has already made in this museum-quality exhibit, and the future purchases of LEGO® kits that our family will continue to make and contribute to Brick City Lights, we will all be leaving a lasting and meaningful gift to all of the children around the world for decades to come.
Like all of the other LEGO® collectors and builders around the world, we know that there is a limit to any single family’s financial resources, the space that they have available, and the time and creativity that they have to devote to creating a highly detailed and fully lit exhibit of this magnitude. Unless the company is able to acquire the space they need, it is highly doubtful that anyone else will ever accomplish what Brick City Lights is attempting to do right now, and then making it available for free online for all of the children around the world to enjoy and to be inspired by. As one of the largest collectors of new LEGO® kits in the world, this family owned business is thoroughly equipped and highly qualified to make this next exhibit a reality for children to enjoy.
THANK YOU FOR HELPING BRICK CITY LIGHTS INSTILL CREATIVITY, INVENTIVENESS, CURIOSITY, AND WHOLESOME IMAGINATION IN CHILDREN AROUND THE WORLD!
My wife and I already know how enriching the content of the videos and photos are to the creative growth of children. From the beginning we’ve also believed that other parents, grandparents, and teachers will believe as we do that the greatly expanded museum-quality exhibit will be a very worthwhile project for the development of curiosity, imagination, creativity, and inventiveness in children around the world. But, your support at this time to acquire the space to make this free museum exhibit a reality for children around the world via the internet is definitely needed. My wife and I sincerely hope that you will make a donation and would like to thank you in advance for your very meaningful contribution!
Additional Information
For more information about Brick City Lights LLC, you can visit their web site at www.BrickCityLights.com
Videos of the current small exhibit can be viewed on you tube at www.youtube.com/c/brickcitylights
Photos of the current small exhibit can be viewed on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.com/BrickCityLights
Contributions or gifts to Brick City Lights LLC are not tax deductible. Contributions received shall be considered gifts to Brick City Lights LLC which is a for profit family-owned corporation even though the company longer has any sources of income from their YouTube children’s videos which are shown worldwide without charge. Contributors will not receive any goods or services in exchange for their gifts. At the discretion of Brick City Lights LLC, gifts received will be used for the acquisition of space for the expansion of the new exhibit; it’s maintenance, utilities, and taxes; construction of the custom table tops which are used to support the exhibit; electrical work and supplies; awareness advertising, and the costs associated with the Go Fund Me campaign. We are not raising money for the purchase of any LEGO® brand products which our family will continue to purchase and donate to Brick City Lights LLC just as we’ve always done in the past.
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO® Group which does not sponsor, authorize, or endorse the YouTube videos, the web site, the Pinterest site, or the Go Fund Me campaign.
Several views of the existing prototype exhibit at night are below. Photos and videos of the current exhibit during the day are available on the company's YouTube and Pinterest sites.
The next museum quality exhibit will be six times larger than what is shown in the photos below which don't even include the current entire exhibit!
Creativity is learned and nurtured both at school and at home.
Organizer and beneficiary
Larry Spiegel
Organizer
Winfield, IL
Brick City Lights
Beneficiary
