Today’s guest article for International Women’s Day comes from Meredith Najewicz, a builder from Atlanta who has built colorful creations from towering New Hashima buildings to epic Elves-inspired landscapes.
The Importance of Visibility
Every year, especially in these post-COVID and “Adults Welcome” times, the AFOL community seems to keep getting larger and bringing in new fans from all walks of life. Some of the most well-known people in the LEGO social media world are now, in fact, women, such as EllieVToys and Emmasaurus. Progress is always a wonderful thing. However, this International Women’s Day, I asked BrickNerd if I could highlight women in our community who are helping to “make a seat at the AFOL table” for women and others who are new to the community.
Now you may be asking “Why is this important?” so I’ll do a quick trip down memory lane to explain. Displaying at my first AFOL/LEGO fan convention, it would be an understatement to say I was intimidated. I think I emailed Todd at BrickFair at least three times to make sure I had registered my MOCs correctly. I ended up displaying next to Martin Harris, who was my theme leader, and it turned out all of my anxiety was completely unfounded. Martin was a great sherpa through helping me with the ins and outs of displaying, as well as heaping loads of compliments and feedback on my MOC.
However, all the good vibes didn’t stop the most annoying question asked mostly from the public: “This build is so great, did your husband/boyfriend build it?” The question is the best way to explain the unease that women can feel when engaging in the hobby we all love.
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That experience made me realize just how important it is to have visible, supportive, and welcoming spaces for women in the AFOL community. Thankfully, many builders are actively working to create those spaces, ensuring that everyone feels like they belong. Let’s take a look at some of the women who are making a difference.
Lenee aka “The Brick Babe”
We all love LEGO for many different reasons, whether it’s for the nostalgia of our childhood or the fun of collecting our favorite pop culture properties in cute brick-built form.
For Lenee, aka The Brick Babe, it was for the creativity, storytelling, and artistic possibilities that LEGO offered as a medium. You might know her as a co-host on the “Good Morning Brickworld” podcast or from her Instagram account, where she frequently does live building shows with her daughter. For me, I personally loved seeing Lenee’s colorful mosaics that typically featured black and brown culture.
Lenee’s AFOL-dom started back in 2020 when she realized that LEGO was more than a toy. I asked Lenee about her journey in becoming an AFOL and MOC builder:
“As I built more, I saw how LEGO could bring people together, spark joy, and inspire creativity in ways I hadn’t imagined before. That’s when I discovered that I could celebrate my culture in heritage through bricks. I proudly build black and brown mosaics that represent the culture.”
When I started following Lenee on Instagram, I noticed she started sharing posts and stories from a group called “Dream Builders LUG.” If you are a seasoned AFOL, you recognize the LUG standard for LEGO User’s Group. While many LUGs are registered with the LEGO Ambassadors Network (LAN), anybody in the community can start a LUG to bring friends or a group of builders together. Lenee started Dream Builders LUG to be in an “inclusive space where diverse builders could come together, be celebrated and feel a true sense of belonging in the LEGO community.”
If you go visit their Instagram page, you’ll see a boatload of content, builds, and pictures of events. The group is over two years old and frequently hosts build challenges for members and anybody who wants to join in (I’m partial to the “Make it Pink” challenge from last October). Lenee sums up the group with this description:
“I wanted a LUG (LEGO User Group) where creativity was at the forefront and where representation mattered—where builders of all backgrounds could share their passion for LEGO without feeling overlooked.”
Lenee apparently didn’t want to stop her AFOL community building at starting a LUG, so she has also started a podcast, “Brown Sugar Bricks.” This February, the podcast hosted a Brick Black History challenge with the hashtag #brickblackhistory. Posts for this challenge included LEGO representations of MLK Jr., Mae Jemison, and Garret Morgan, inventor of the three light traffic light. Lenee describes her goal with the podcast as the following:
“Brown Sugar Bricks came from that same spirit of representation. I wanted to amplify Black voices in the LEGO space and showcase the incredible talent and creativity within the Black AFOL community. It’s not just a podcast—it’s a movement, a space where we can talk about our experiences, our builds, and our impact in the LEGO world.”
When Lenee isn’t running a LUG, hosting her own podcast and co-hosting another, she finds time to build wonderful MOCs. One build that I find lovely (with some great LEGO NPU) is her mosaic version of the cover of “I Am Enough,” a book by Grace Myers. She also has adorable small mosaics of pop culture such as the Mario Bros., Snoopy, and Hello Kitty.
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With all of Lenee’s efforts, I feel as if she is not just making seats at the table, but she is opening the extension, adding a leaf and bringing in a whole community of AFOLs. When asked about what she thinks about for the future of the community and the women in it, Lenee responded with the following:
“I want to see more women in leadership roles, more visibility for women builders, and more opportunities for women to shape the future of the LEGO community. There’s still a gap when it comes to recognition, and I want to see that shift. Women bring unique perspectives and creativity to LEGO, and it’s important that our contributions are acknowledged and celebrated.”
And to sum it all up:
“The more we support and uplift each other, the stronger and more inclusive this community will become.”
Llano aka “Femme from the Block”
Like many AFOLs, Llano had the typical dark age and rediscovered LEGO during her adulthood in 2012 with the Monster Fighters theme. Cue COVID-19, and suddenly, Llano had time on her hands, along with a LEGO collection that she had been building in the years since exiting her dark age. For Llano, the shutdown led to making new online AFOL friends and participating in online build challenges.
You can find her adorable and well-executed LEGO animation on the Tricky Bricks (Flynn and Richard from LEGO Masters Season 1) livestream openings along with her song.
During the middle of the COVID lockdown, Llano took the leap and decided to host her own build challenge, ‘We Arrr Family’ (#Wearrrfamily). The LEGO Pirate-themed sets are fondly remembered by many an AFOL, and Llano remembers many of her first LEGO sets being from Pirates. You can summarize that the build theme of this challenge was pirates, but for Llano, it was a bit more than just pirates:
“Pirates, queer people, and AFOLs all build diverse communities around common goals and shared interests. We Arrr Family revolves around creating your own diverse crew, whether that’s multiple skin tones, species, or combining Minidolls and figs and brick-built creatures like some participants did.”
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While Llano is no longer posting on Instagram (she is now on BlueSky), you can still enjoy the wonderful, humorous, colorful, and beautiful creations from this challenge. As a personal fan of colorful pirate ships, builds that inspire AFOLs to think out of the box, especially on a well-known LEGO theme, are always fun. Additionally, the challenge had no real barrier to participation. AFOLs could build vignettes, custom minifigures, microscale, brick-built characters, and anything in between. With the sky being the limit, the challenge showed what could be done when folks come together for fun, diversity, piracy, and LEGO.
Working with minidolls can be a hot topic in AFOL circles (which I point back to EllieVToys having over two million subscribers on YouTube), Llano’s current LEGO creative work is heavily focused on custom minidolls and minifigures. Llano mashed up all sorts of themes, LEGO ones included, to create groups of figures inspired by Pixar/Buzz Lightyear, DC, Adventure Time, Space, and of course, Pirates. The variety of accessories, arms, and legs, coupled with a smaller space requirement, is what makes this LEGO medium so enjoyable to Llano. She describes her overall love of customizing as:
“Over the last few years, I’ve had more space and money to collect LEGO, but less time to build! This has led me to focus on customizing minifigures and minidolls, popping and swapping arms and legs, and customizing them with the endless accessories that LEGO makes. There’s more instant gratification and shareability than building larger MOCs, plus I’m able to represent a wider array of identities than we get officially.“
Creating and representing diverse groups of people has been difficult with LEGO minifgures, but Llano’s creations pull off fun and diverse characters with ease. The figures seem to all go back to Llano’s We Arrr Family idea about putting together a crew representing a cast of unique characters that all exist in a world together. I asked Llano what she would like to see for the AFOL community moving forward:
“My hope is that we make the AFOL community a welcoming and more diverse place. The more perspectives and backgrounds that are brought to any hobby, the better. The more diverse the builders, the more diverse the builds! I especially want women, queer people, and POC to feel welcome. We often don’t see ourselves represented in media, so being able to take control and represent ourselves is incredibly empowering.”
Jen aka “BrickFamBuilds”
While “barrier to entry” is usually an economic term, most AFOLs would agree that getting started in MOCing is always overwhelming, whether it’s the bricks needed, reluctance of criticism, fear of being the newbie, or just plain lack of ideas. Jen aka BrickFamBuilds on Instagram started MOCing during the pandemic lockdown in 2020 and picked up on creating habitat builds for an online challenge from the Rambling Brick.
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If you are not familiar with habitat standard, check out the article here. Habitats can be a basic scene or elaborate themed stacks, with each typically focusing on a minifigure. Habitats tend to be lower on the parts intensity scale due to their compact nature but rather focus the builder on parts usage, texture, and story telling. They are both a great place to dip your toes into MOCing as well as a place for seasoned builders to play.
After joining in on her first challenge in 2020, Jen decided to host her own for Halloween that year. While Jen is currently on a hiatus, that first Halloween Habitat challenge turned into five years of nearly monthly challenges. Jen had challenges for most of the seasonal events on our calendar but also added Marvel, CMFs, Pride, and the very popular Disney challenges as well.
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In 2023, Jen decided to go bigger, not in the size of the habitat, but in the scope. She hosted a collaborative display of attendees “Sig Fig” habitats at Brickworld Chicago. This collaborative idea truly brings AFOLs together, especially in the minifigure-sized version of themselves. After five years of hosting, Jen has inspired over 12,000 habitats, from first-time MOCers to the folks who started MOCing when Flickr was the center of the custom build universe.
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Moving forward, Jen sums up what she would like to see for women, especially women builders in the AFOL community:
“Looking ahead, I hope the AFOL community continues to embrace and celebrate the exceptional talent of female builders. It has been incredibly rewarding to see more women not only nominated for awards at conventions and LEGO shows but also winning them.”
A Growing Community
All these women that have been featured are not just making a seat at the AFOL table, they are expanding it. Their stories highlight the power of representation, the importance of fostering community, and the joy of building. The AFOL world continues to grow and evolve, and as more diverse voices join in, the stronger and more vibrant it becomes.
As we celebrate International Women’s Day, let’s continue to support and uplift the women in our LEGO community. Because the more we build together, the more we ensure that everyone—regardless of gender, background, or experience—has a place in this incredible hobby. Because creativity knows no boundaries, and the best builds come from a community that welcomes all.
Who are other builders who inspire you who should be featured? Let us know in the comments below.
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