Zoe Bingham is the nine-year-old winner of LEGOLAND Windsor Resort’s recent competition to create a fantastical beast for including in the theme park’s new MYTHICA: World of Mythical Creatures land.
MYTHICA is the newest land to have opened at LEGOLAND Windsor Resort and to celebrate that, the theme park has run a competition. Children have been encouraged to design their own fantastical being and submit their idea – and now Zoe Bingham, from Oxford, has won the contest with her Beauty Beast design.
What has begun as an illustration by the nine-year-old will become a six-foot-tall LEGO model. LEGO model makers will realise her design in bricks and then install it in the theme park’s new land.
Inspired by Zoe’s passion for nature, Beauty Beast is an eco-friendly creature with mythical powers to fight climate change and restore balance to the parallel universe of LEGO MYTHICA. The design features an array of different animal parts including giraffe legs, dazzling peacock feathers, an elegant swan head, plus mythical phoenix wings.
Blocks magazine Issue 81 celebrates 25 years of LEGOLAND Windsor with previously untold stories from the original model making team that got the theme park ready for opening. To get the LEGO magazine for fans every month – at a discount and earlier than the shops – order a 12-month or 24-month subscription. Direct debit payment options are available too; to find out more get in touch via subs@silverbackpublishing.rocks.
Zoe’s LEGO loving Uncle, Richard Bingham from East Sussex, sadly died of bowel cancer in August last year. The two shared a passion for the brick and before lockdown began shared a day together at LEGOLAND Windsor Resort.
‘I’m so excited to see Beauty Beast made into a life-size model at LEGOLAND Windsor. My sister Emma and I both entered the competition a day before the closing date, and I never thought in a million years that my design would have a chance at being nominated,’ says Zoe.
‘We have more than 10,000 bricks to play with and I love building and creating imaginary worlds out of LEGO which was really helpful during lockdown because it meant that I could play and come up with lots of different characters and stories. I can’t wait to see Beauty Beast next to all of the other LEGO MYTHICA creatures.’
A public vote on social media saw Zoe’s Beauty Beast selected and the model will be unveiled in August.
‘Like so many families, we had to work at the same time as trying to cover home schooling during lockdown. Zoe and her sister Emma were brilliant, but really missed their friends and family,’ says Zoe’s mother Liz Bingham. ‘The competition was a great activity one afternoon, and the girls loved getting into the idea of a blended, magical creature and the idea that all LEGO creations live in MYTHICA.
‘Losing Uncle Rich during the pandemic was hard as we couldn’t see him for a long time. Zoe was really close to her uncle who encouraged her model making and I’m sure he would have been so proud and told everyone he knew.’