Keeping flying for 10 years is no mean feat for any event, but it is a real achievement when every single person involved volunteers their time and resources for free.
To celebrate our tenth season we want to highlight some of our history. While many of you have known about us for a while now, one of the greatest things about Firefly is new Browncoats are discovering the series, and in turn us, all the time.
Here are a few things you may or may not know about Can’t Stop the Serenity.
It all began with one man’s idea. The One True b!X wanted to celebrate Joss’ birthday with a charity screening of Serenity, realizing it was a great idea he mentioned it on the message boards.
Browncoats worldwide responded. Called Serenity Now Equality Now, b!x handled the Tshirt sales and helped to co-ordinate all of the events. 46 cities in 5 countries held events between 17th and 31st June 2006, raising $65,900 for Equality Now.
The One True b!X chose Equality Now as the charity because it was close to Joss Whedon’s heart. His mother, Lee Stearns, had inspired the organisation’s founders.
Did you know the original website still exists, listing all participating cities and reports?
The enthusiasm and excitement after the first events led to ideas about how things could be done bigger and better the next year. Suddenly Can’t Stop the Serenity became an annual event.
108 individual cities across 9 countries have hosted events since CSTS began.
15 cities have participated in every CSTS, 8 have already registered events for 2015:
- Arlington
- Atlanta
- Boston
- Dallas Fort Worth
- Denver
- Melbourne
- Minneapolis
- Philadelphia
- Phoenix
- Pittsburgh
- Portland
- Raleigh
- Seattle
- Toronto
- Tucson
Adam Levermore, better known as Lexigeek in the Browncoat community, designed the 2007 and 2008 logos and returned to create our 10th one.
In 2009 the Art Contest was introduced and Don McMillan, Melanie Fischer, Steve Jeyes and Jake Thompson have produced the winning logos, Don and Melanie each won two years in a row.
At the end of our 9th year we had raised over a million dollars for charity.
You can read more about our history including participating cities, donation totals and past logos on our website here and in our archived forums here.
