ABOUT

CONCEPT
In March 2020 life was turned upside down. What did it mean? How would it unfold and how would families and in particular children cope with lockdown?

We're living through a moment in history. A moment we must capture as we will be talking about it for many years to come. And while life for the time being has been turned upside down, we know from past moments in history that challenging times like this are also times of great creativity as people adjust to new ways of living and working.

We’ll learn a lot from what we’re experiencing today and so much of what we are learning will help make positive changes to the way we live, work and play in the future. So, we wanted to make sure that we record this important moment in time through the eyes of the next generation.



EXECUTION
This was the birth moment for ‘How I See Tomorrow’, a simple idea to capture the observations and aspirations of children from all over the world during COVID through artworks that they create.


Stage 1

• To capture this moment in time as a seminal moment of social history through the eyes of children.
• Capture the future aspirations of children from all around the world as a result of today’s experiences of COVID.
• Create a portal to share the works and engage children across the world in sharing their experiences.

Stage 2
• Use the observations captured to prick the conscience of today’s generation to make change in order to help facilitate the dreams of our future generation whatever those dreams turn out to be.

RESULTS
Without any marketing budget whatsoever after six months the website had been visited by 35 different nations across every continent from New Zealand to Columbia, from Malta to Canada, from the UAE to India, from North Africa to South Africa and throughout mainland Europe.



• We have enjoyed over two hundred thousand media impressions in the first month of launch.

• Massive engagement across multiple digital platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and the web) Hobbycraft have reached 650,000 homes on their own Facebook channel alone. The How I See Tomorrow Instagram page has also reached 15,000 homes in twenty different countries from a standing start with re-posts and shares of individual posts making the final number impossible for us to quantify or qualify but just to say it is big!
• It’s spiked the interest of galleries around the world who have shared the initiative through their own networks with a good number interested in putting on a show of the works once this pandemic is over. The large number of entries from Australia for example has been down to the support and interest shown by the MCA for example.



Qualitatively however the impact of this project is far more impressive and truly humbling. It has been uplifting for those reading the rationales of artworks created by the children and perhaps one of our early submissions from Vivienne aged 5 from Australia is the perfect example: 

“Everyone in the world holding hands and closing their eyes and wishing the virus goes away”.