By Akola Thompson

IN 2021, Rafaela Oviedo and Juliana Lopes had a conversation about creating an anime and comic convention.

At the time, there was only one cosplay event hosted in Guyana by a large company, and though Guyana has an avid entertainment scene, events involving the realm of fandom would’ve never been touched before as an industry.

It was in recognising this gap that Oviedo, CEO of Seishonen, envisioned events by which avenues for the youth would be provided so they could express their creative interests and showcase commerce and talent, such as was seen in the development of its signature event, FumaCon.

“During the pandemic, FumaCon was initially created to bring back some optimism and freedom to our youth that they might have missed due to social distancing. Community is essential for young people and having a safe place for youth to congregate is essential for their development,” said the team.

Besides the event being an anime and comic convention, they want young people to feel passionate about pursuing their passions and as such, partnered with Watchroom Technologies Inc.

“Watchroom is a community platform based on voice where people come to discuss anime and react to the latest episodes. The developers behind Watchroom are young award-winning and Emmy-nominated founders with backgrounds in tech, entertainment, and video and animation-based innovation. With this collaboration, we were able to create a temporary, free FumaCon x Watchroom server for Guyanese to discuss their favourite shows and manga,” said the team.

“Promoting Guyanese culture is another vision behind FumaCon’s branding. Most notably, our logo features one of Guyana’s most popular birds, the Kisadee. We’ve also paid homage to Indigenous culture by including its linguistic heritage in our event named “FumaCon.” Fuma meaning “Fire,” is derived from one of our Indigenous people’s languages, Arawak.”

Their vision was realised with their first FumaCon event being held in 2022, making it the first of its kind in Guyana to host almost 2,000 young persons, from ages six to 30+ to cosplay as their favourite characters, support local businesses and cultivate friendships.

Lopes noted that many of FumaCon’s exhibitors were youth-led businesses between the ages of 18-25 years old.

“Our team considers this a major accomplishment since we want to develop FumaCon into a fun, commercial hub for a variety of businesses. Since our team comprises small business owners, we were happy to create a space for retail businesses to sell their products/services,” she said.

“In our planning and logistics phase, FumaCon provided part-time employment for 20 young people. It was important for our team to hire experienced youth to create our designs, contract development etc.”

It was incredibly important to them to create a space for young people to earn, as access to finance remains a major hurdle for many young persons, and has been a challenge for the organisers and the execution of their event.

A Cultural and Creative Industries grant from the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport in 2022 helped them to execute their vision.

FumaCon 2023 takes place on October 14 at the Guyana Marriott Hotel. (Loop Entertainment)