Snail Mail My Email is a month-long (July 15 – August 15), interactive community art project which seeks to both share the warm-fuzzy feeling of receiving a personalized letter as well as inspire people to send their own snail mail. Anyone with internet access can partake by simply sending an email, after which the very same message will be handwritten and physically mailed to the chosen recipient anywhere in the world, completely free of charge.
In a culture overrun with instant gratification and on-demand services, this project cultivates appreciation for the lost art of letter writing.
Here’s an article written about it from the WSJ. Read the full article HERE
Ivan Cash, the creator of Snail Mail My Email, discovered his love of physical letters while studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa. “I made a point of sending lots of postcards. It felt like a lot more meaningful to send physical letters. It’s a lot more deliberate. You have to think about it. You can’t just do it and it be over. It’s not going to be an instant response or instant receiving of mail,” said Cash.
“Snail mail fascinates me,” he said. “There’s something warm and fuzzy about coming home and checking the mail and getting a letter from a friend. It’s such an intimate for of communication, especially in today’s world.”
But when he noticed his letter correspondence was dwindling as text and Facebook messages were growing, he decided something needed to change. The 25 year old, who was working a face-paced life in advertising, quit his job and embarked on a new project, Snail Mail My Email.
The premise was simple: To give life to this dying form of communication, he would transcribe an email by hand and send it to the intended recipient, a service he was offering free of charge. But as the project grew at an exponential scale, Mr. Cash realized he couldn’t do it alone, recruiting volunteers who donated their time to write letters as well as money for postage. Still, the Snail Mail crew is playing catch up. On a recent day, the site had more than 1,000 requests, prompting Cash to halt requests for a couple days. Can you believe that? Strangers, spending their own time and money to hand-write you a letter from a friend? Amazing (Read Full Article HERE)
