Cards of Cyprus are the Mailbox project

There’s something so exciting about getting letters in the mail, and I’m talking about handwritten letters, not bills and all that dreary stuff. During the holidays, it’s common to send Christmas cards to loved ones around the world. Mailing cards this season may have been a little more difficult with the challenges the post office is currently facing, but it’s not impossible and a local initiative is here to remind us to share our messages and feel the Christmas spirit.

The Mailbox Project is a venture by Phaneromenis 70 NGO and cultural shop, which has taken the messages people have left on a public blackboard and turned them into postcards! A while ago a board was installed outside the store for the public to write their thoughts on. Any message was good enough as the board was a space for people to unwind their minds. Following the hashtags people created, the shop then photographed the messages and turned them into postcards, which are now ready to be delivered back to the people.

It’s an initiative that began in Christmas 2018 although this is the first year the messages are transformed into something else. The blackboard is permanently installed in Stoa Phaneromenis, waiting for new messages for the next series of postcards.

These postcards though aren’t your ordinary Christmas cards, though the shop has those as well. These are a collection of random, real and raw messages from ordinary people. Sketches, catchphrases in the Cypriot dialect, wishes and scribbles make up the cards. But the project hasn’t stopped at just postcards. T-shirts and sweatshirts have also been made with photos of the messages.

With the countdown on to Christmas there is just enough time to send holiday cards and buy Christmas gifts. Why not make it something different, something local?

 

Tel: 22-663320

 

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.