A weekend of Tea Duelling, a mini Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling, and Hobby Horse Show Jumping were some of the highlights of last weekend’s Steampunks in Neverland event.
Organised by Steampunks of Gloucestershire, the event was centred around Kingshill House in Dursley and attracted participants from across the county. The steampunk aesthetic is based around 19th century science fiction that incorporates industrial steam-powered machinery, and steampunk literature is often set in alternative history of the Victorian era.
Saturday afternoon saw the much-anticipated tea duelling where two opponents dunked a malted milk biscuit in a cup of tea for five seconds then held it in front of them, the loser being the one whose biscuit falls to the table, or on the command of ‘nom’ is the first to cleanly eat the biscuit.
Matt McCall, the group’s chairman, told Stroud Times: “We’re here for two days and celebrating the science fiction and fantasy of the mid-Victorian period, although science fiction has its roots way back before then. The first proper science fiction novel of the modern era was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; it’s not a horror novel.
“A lot of authors that were writing fantasy had a go at science fiction – even Tolkien and CS Lewis – so today’s theme is Neverland, based on the Peter Pan story. We’re aware the original stories are not quite the way Disney tells them, but it does encourage people to read and stretch their imagination. We’ve got a number of people dressed as pirates and a Peter Pan here today. We’ve even got a shadow running around. It’s all about stretching your imagination and enjoying yourself – there are no rules, so you can’t be wrong.”
The event is meant to be fun – which it clearly was: “We’re here to make people laugh, to make people enjoy themselves and come out of their shells a little bit,” explained Matt.
“A lot of our members are neurodivergent. We have a huge cross-section of community, some of which comes from the LGBTQ+ community as well. We’ve got a lot of people with disabilities who are very, very isolated and one of our members was saying quite recently how she’d moved to Gloucester and become involved with us and she’s now going out places and doing things – it was like she had found her tribe.”
Rach Hall, a full-time artist and one of the group’s directors, spoke about her late autism diagnosis: “As an adult you’re taught you’re not allowed to play any more, it’s not something we’re encouraged to do, but that’s what we do – we get together and play and do silly things and it gives you a reason to enjoy life outside the structure of everyday life and work.
“Our mission statement is very focussed on making sure everybody feels safe – we only use disabled accessible venues and we’re aware of how we communicate with our neurodivergent members.
“It gives us a space to be ourselves.”
Steampunks of Gloucestershire, founded in 2016, has a team of seven directors and is a CIC (Community Interest Company) whose focus is to run community events. There are around 2,000 members and events can attract anywhere between several dozen, right up to 2,500-3,000 people.
Money raised at the events throughout the year goes back to the hosting venue and since 2020 has raised thousands of pounds for venues around the county. For more information click here.
Pictures by Matt Bigwood
