Phone home, tell friends

Two days ago, we realised something. That by clicking around the website, it’s pretty easy to learn what 26 Treasures is all about. There’s a teaser here, a blog post there, a press release under, a headline over. If you know a little, you can learn a lot.

But then one of us asked a question.

Would a visitor who’s just come from the moon and has never heard of 26 Treasures before find out all it needs to know from the website? Quickly? Without having to flick and click? Without stress or fuss?

Maybe not.

Until Olivia, one of our editors, wrote this.

Dear alien

Congratulations. Even after travelling across many galaxies, you’ve managed to time your visit to earth perfectly to coincide with the 26 Treasures exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. And further congratulations are in order for visiting our website to find out more. Either you’ve got extremely good sources of intelligence. Or are lucky. Or both.

During your time on earth, you will learn many things about human beings. What we’re good at. What we’re not so good at. We like to think that 26 Treasures is an example of many things that humans are good at and therefore hope we may be useful in your study.

Here’s a quick tour of the good:

Designing, creating, making – the 26 Treasures exhibition tells the story of 26 treasures. All of these objects are evidence of our human skill in creating objects and the different things that are important to us in our lives– objects that are made for fun (how about a bed that can sleep 26 butchers and their wives), to remember or to be remembered, to adorn and even sometimes for a use (like sitting in).

Appreciating beauty – the treasures in the exhibition are all at least 250 years old. The oldest are 500 years old. And yet we have treasured those objects over the years, they have been passed down through families, been used, looked after, polished, looked into. And in the museum they are on display for people from all over this world (and others) to come and look; to absorb their beauty – whether the beauty of their form, or of their craftsmanship.

Telling stories – using our imaginations to take other people to new places.

Playing – why stories of 62 words? Why not? It gives us a structure to have fun with.

Playing together – so many people have come together to make this project possible, just because they share a love of words, and stories, and art.

Getting carried away by an idea – every journey begins with an idea. Your journey here no doubt began with a glimmer of curiosity. And then an idea. Maybe Earth wasn’t your original destination, and then people encouraged you to go further and further, further than you had thought possible. So it is the same with the journey of this project. And each person that we meet, you included, becomes part of that journey.

26 – it’s a magic number.

So visit the Victoria & Albert Museum between 18 – 26 September. And come back to the website, as we add new content and stories to it every couple of days. And we hope that you will be inspired to contribute your own 62 words on an object of your choice – we know that you will have an original perspective. And as you continue on your travels to other galaxies, then tell strangers that you meet in moon hotels about the good that you saw here on Earth.

Olivia

So now we have this. For any aliens who visit earth around the time of the London Design Festival.

And soon we’ll have a promotional video on the homepage that shows and tells everything. And a photo page on the website. And the beginning of a special online exhibition on 18 August.

Humans and aliens welcome.