While digital technology has amplified the speed and distance of our reach, a letter—words set to paper in pencil or ink, written in silence—is still a hand- carried thing. Folded, placed in a stamped envelope, the letter might travel across time zones to land some days or weeks later at your door: a material connection between you the reader, and the writer. The weight and smell of the paper, the image on the stamp, communicates as surely as the news, congratulations or condolence, ideas or feelings the letter might contain.
History is full of correspondence that has crossed oceans and endured over decades of friendship. Bundled in string, saved in attic trunks, each letter is a form of touch, is a looking back and a looking forward. Every letter stitches the near at hand to the far away from a particular place in time. What might a letter addressed to the future, a not-yet time and place, contain? If you imagine that the future is a winter coat, with what would you fill its pockets? What does the future need to know, to remember, to carry forward? What stories need repeating? What knowledge needs passing on? What memories need carrying into the future?
Letters written to the future will form part of We Will Sing, a project developed by visual artist Ann Hamilton for the vast top-floor of the former textile factory, Salts Mill, as part of Bradford 2025. Letters will be solicited from the community: schools
and libraries, reading and writing groups, retirement homes, social clubs and individuals. Letters scribed and donated to the project will be read out loud during the exhibition with a selection reproduced and shared in a free newspaper accompanying the project. Please consider contributing your letter to the future.
Be sure to keep your letter free from any personal details that may identify you or anyone else, and submit at bradford2025.co.uk/opportunity/we- will-sing-letters-to-the-future or post to:
The Future
c/o Bradford 2025
1a Aldermanbury
Bradford
BD1 1SD
Letter-writing stations and drop-boxes will be set up around Salts Mill during the exhibition (3rd May – 2nd November 2025).
At the culmination of the project, all the letters will be archived and published online at wewillsing-letterstothefuture. tumblr.com.
For full details please download the information document.