At a convention you see the efforts of hundreds to thousands of people who re-create characters from a wide variety of fan culture with a cultish approach to imitation and detail. These efforts display a wide range of artistic skills that are not necessarily accredited as such. ART CON GUELPH (ACG) is an investigation of how the participatory model of fan conventions and their creative interactions can be pushed beyond the boundaries of fandom and be used as a site of interaction, original expression and artistic practices. The goal of ACG is to see how this potential model can be employed to encourage youth to initiate their own artistic practices through original self expression. This essay focuses on the discussion of integrating both the theoretical and practical foundations of ACG in order to build a new framework of art practice which focuses on the public as the fulcrum of the work.