Summer in the City 2017

This year, Ellen and I decided to take a little weekend trip up to London to attend Summer in the City. For those of you that don't know, SitC is a YouTube festival where you have the chance to meet your favourite YouTubers, meet other fans and watch industry specific panels. I made a video about our time at SitC, which can be found on my YouTube channel if you're more of a visual person!

This was our first time attending SitC and to be honest, we weren't really sure what to expect. We went to the creator day on the Friday, as Ellen and I both have YouTube channels and thought that information would be useful to us. It was kind of intimidating being sat in the panels and seeing all the people around us raise their hands when asked "who has over 10,000 subscribers" but we were there to learn, not to feel inferior. I'm glad we went to that first day, mainly because we both got a sense of the size of the exhibition centre, where everything was and how to get out. Ellen and I both struggle a bit with large crowds and it can be especially overwhelming for Ellen, so having the chance to walk around when it was calm and quiet worked perfectly for us.

The next couple of days were so different from the creator day, the arena was filled with people all looking out for YouTubers to take pictures with, going on the rides that were there, queuing for the Meet & Greets. In terms of things to do, there wasn't much unless you had lots of meet and greets, or planned to sit and listen to panels all day. You had to pay for the rides, not that we were particularly interested in going on them, but for the amount of money you can pay for a ticket, you would at least expect that to be free. I think that was the general theme with SitC is that it was difficult to see where your ticket money went and it greatly reduced the amount of things we could do due to lack of money.

That being said, we had a great weekend together. We had a chance to go into central London on the Saturday morning which on reflection, was mainly centred around food! We visited Dum Dum Doughnuts, Crumbs & Doilies cupcakes, Wagamama and Choccywoccydoodah before heading back to SitC for the first "proper" day.

I'm not sure if I would do SitC again next year, it felt more centred around younger audiences and there weren't many YouTubers there that I actually watch. So for the price of the ticket, personally, it wasn't worth it. The highlight of the weekend was just getting to spend time with my sister which we haven't done in a really long time, and wandering around at our own pace, exploring together.