T-Shirt Travelling The World For Project HOPE Attempts To Bring The World Closer

T-Shirt Travelling The World For Project HOPE Attempts To Bring The World Closer

If there is one thing that we all collectively missed due to the coronavirus induced lockdown, it was travelling. Earlier in year of 2020 when the coronavirus had not yet fully taken its form, I too had booked my tickets for a trip with my college friends, like everyone else I was also forced to sit at home and think about how the trip might have unfolded. The lockdowns also brought with it other anxieties and troubles.

For creator Siddhanth Agarwal, the pandemic changed many lives and among it was his own. In June of 2020, despondent with his unproductive routine and the warped sense of loopy existence that life had been reduced to, he decided to send a beacon of hope on a world tour in the form of a t-shirt, thus formulating ‘Project HOPE: The Traveling T-Shirt’.

As part of this project, an actual, tangible t-shirt, just one of its kind, set off on a mission to travel across 5 continents, 10 countries, and 13 cities. The t-shirt reaches one video storyteller in each of the designated cities who then, through their own creative expression, take us on a journey through the city. So far, the t-shirt has travelled to Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and is currently in New York. We got in touch with the man behind the project to get a better understanding of the motivations, hurdles, and the need for such a concept.

Please tell us a little about your project and the idea behind it?

Project HOPE: The travelling t-shirt is a real-life story of an actual physical t-shirt, just one of it in existence, which is on a mission to travel across 5 continents, 10 countries and 13 cities. The t-shirt itself reaches one video storyteller in each of these cities. Vloggers wear that t-shirt and make a short feature film about anything that they want to while depicting their rendition of the word ‘HOPE’. This project represents each and every individual who wanted to travel during the lockdown and the ones who had to fight their demons while being stuck in their homes like I had to.

How did the conception of the project take place and did it go like you envisioned?

The idea hit me during a phase of desperation. Lockdown, tail end of the month of June, 2 am, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I went to the rooftop. I sat there for 3 hours straight and just tried to calm myself down. There was no apparent reason, I did not know what was happening to me. First thing next day in the morning, I called up a close friend and I told him how I felt the night earlier. Before that conversation with him, I did not know how an anxiety attack felt like. I felt hollow. It was the first time something of that sort happened to me. I took a week off from my day job. And with the help of some music and some time with myself, I started feeling better, but, I felt like I have this responsibility that I need to help others overcome a feeling similar to what I felt that night. A feeling which drains even the last ounce of positivity in someone’s life and leaves them short on breath. One fine day, it struck me that people did not feel bad because they had nowhere to go, but, because they had nowhere to hide from themselves, their feelings and their demons. I have always loved the idea of traveling and how it takes us away from all the feelings we are scared of. I thought about it day in day out and something just clicked. I said to myself, “humans can’t travel, but a t-shirt can!”. That was the very moment this project came to life.

I think it is going pretty well till now, it’s a project in evolution with a lot of variable and things that can go wrong, we’re trying our best to navigate through a lot of them and we have been able to do it successfully till now. Fingers crossed!

Further, the pandemic induced lockdown made us all feel like the world had never felt smaller yet never felt more unreachable, do you believe that your project thus became a way for the world to be within your reach?

Well, your question is pretty bang on. I always wanted to travel to all these cities around the globe and even more so during the lock-down. Yes, a big part of the world has been out of my reach before this project started but now when I think about it, it feels smaller than my backyard, from start to end, the entire world tour of this t-shirt has been planned and is being implemented from the comfort of my bedroom. Through this project, you too can travel the world within the safety of your own house because HOPE is traveling on behalf of not just me but all of us.

The project can also be viewed as a way to initiate a creative dialogue in a world that felt hopeless. Was it an intuitive decision or thought out decision?

It is nothing more than my intuitive effort. I knew that this idea had the potential to connect with the masses because it is super relatable in every way. However, I was only half-expecting for it to really click but to be in a position where I am talking to you about it speaks volume about how much it has grown and formed a creative dialogue around Project HOPE. Having a creative approach toward a topic as sensitive as mental health is not always the easiest things to pull off but I genuinely feel that the sheer happy nature of this project makes the entire conversation a lot more humane and less intrusive in every possible way.

What were some of the challenges you encountered?

There were quite a number of hurdles that I had to take care of. Getting vloggers on board being the biggest of them all. In the beginning, all that I had was an idea and nothing for their reference. But, the relatability of this idea knew no borders. They instantly connected with the idea and happily came on board. The second challenge was to keep the content fresh as the project progressed which actually proved to be quite a blessing as it forced me to think outside the usual ‘vlogging’ format of video story-telling. I embraced the challenge by onboarding a free-climber, a skateboarder, a parkour artist, a graffiti artist, a busker, a freestyle rapper and a BMX rider. The third challenge was probably the toughest one yet – that is the need to reach more and more people through this project, but just like all the previous challenges, I am continuously working on this challenge also, giving this interview being a part of it too.
I also had a gigantic task of confirming inter-connectivity between all these countries as it was quite uncertain during the worldwide lockdown. Humans for sure were not allowed to travel but logistics giant DHL was more than happy to help me out. They arranged a contactless pickup from my doorstep, making sure that inter-connectivity between all the cities was established and confirmed even before I sent the t-shirt to the first stop, Singapore.

Lastly, what is the future of this project and any other insights you would like to share?

Well, first things first, I want to complete the project in 2021 itself. We aren’t even halfway through the itinerary yet and adding pressure to the already-strict timelines is the fact that this project is evolving, it is bound to get even more detailed because that’s the way I function, I try to add new layers during ideation of each episode but since I am very new to content creation in general, it depends on how quickly I am able to learn stuff for myself. HOPE is planning to travel to New York, Alberta, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Istanbul, Cape Town and Mumbai in 2021 before she comes back home, New Delhi.
Apart from Project HOPE, I am going to build content that’s eye-grabbing, inspiring and fresh. More than relevance, introducing my audience to a newer form of content is what I want to do.

I want to put forward content that might interest and satisfy a crowd; content that is real; content that is informative; content that is not fiction. I want to document topics which are not talked about in general but have a tremendous potential audience. I want to explore topics which have not been explored yet but are ‘massy’ in their own rights and are away from the conventional genres of online content these days while not letting it get serious at any time but always making it interesting and informative.

If you enjoyed reading this, we suggest you also read:

Related Stories

No stories found.
logo
Homegrown
homegrown.co.in