How to Organize a Journal Mail Art Round Robin
A journal mail art round robin is an event where one or several journals are sent through the mail from person to person. Each participant has to make an entry in the journal, and he sends it on to the next participant. Once the project is complete, the participants have a collaborative artwork with contributions from all over.
Things You'll Need
- Mailing list
- Website
- Computer
- Scanner
- Journals
- Art supplies
- Mailing supplies
Instructions
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Decide on the scope of the project. You will need to think about how many people you want to include. Consider whether you want to use one journal or have several going at the same time. Decide if you want each artist to have one turn or several. You should also think about the schedule. Determine how often participants are required to mail their journal.
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Come up with a mailing list. Get the addresses of several of your friends around the world. Put them in some order. If you need more participants, have your friends recruit other participants; obtain their addresses. It is also a good idea to get everyone's email address.
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Post rules for the journal mail art round robin. On a Website, write the mailing list, the deadlines for mailing the journal to the next person, and any other rules you want to make. Many journal mail art round robins are open-ended, allowing the participants to draw, paint, collage, or write about any topic they choose. Other projects have a certain theme or asks each participant to react to the journal entry immediately before his.
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Send out one or several journals. You can send out plain journals if you want to, but you will get the best results if you send altered ones. Create funky covers that will really inspire your participants to get creative, then get the project going.
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Stay on top of everything. Make sure that the journals keep moving on schedule. Contact anyone who forgets to mail a journal to get her to send it on. Make it a fun thing for everybody for best results; you'll want it to be a friendly reminder.
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Scan everything in. When the project is done, scan each journal into the Website so everyone can see the entries. Keep the journals for yourself, or give them away to some of the participants.
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Tips & Warnings
Don't let it get too big. If you can, restrict the journal mail art project to people you know. That way, you are less likely to send it to someone who subsequently drops off the face of the earth without sending the journal on.
