History

Mark Cleaver & Sean Meadows, with the desire to promote the cuter side of anime founded Minami Con in February 1995. Unfortunately, at that time only, the violent & tentacle anime seemed to be making its way to our shores. Something had to be done! Our first Con took place on Sunday, 21st July 1995 at the Hilton Hotel in Portsmouth. Our guest of honour was Helen McCarthy and over 100 cute-starved fans attended. We shockingly broke even and had enough money to put down a deposit for the next convention ^_^

Minami Con 2 took place again at the Hilton but we were getting more popular and the Hilton was beginning to get rather full. Even the air conditioning realised this and broke down due to the hordes of cute fanatics packing us out ^_^

It was therefore decided to look for a new venue and to expand the Con to a 2-day event. After frenzied searching, the Novotel in conjunction with the Ibis gave us a new home in Southampton. Our new venue was a great success and we broke the 200 mark of attendees.

For our fourth Con, we expanded to a 3 day event and have followed this formula ever since. However, after this Con, Sean and other Minami Anime committee members who had been running the Con decided they could no longer devote their time to the event. This just left Mark and the Con nearly vanished, until at the last minute it was saved when the London Anime Club decided to join forces with Minami Anime and jointly run the Con.

Since then, the Con has been organised by both clubs and continues to be an outstanding success. These days we easily fill the 350-person capacity of our venue and unfortunately we have had to turn prospective attendees away. In the case of Minami Con 9, we sold out 4 months before the Con.

In 2004, Minami Con was totally revamped for the 10th anniversary celebration and was a huge success with plenty of new events being introduced. For the past few years, Minami Con has continued to experiment with the events and the committee has worked hard to ensure that no one Minami Con experience is the same as the last.

In 2009, we held our big 15th anniversary bash. Thanks to everyone, we had successfully raised a substantial amount of money for the British Heart Foundation in memory of our former treasurer, Ewan Chrystal.

We are now looking forward to our 18th Minami Con and hope that you can join us in 2012.