This article was published on November 9, 2011

The 11Eleven Project is creating a global experience for 11/11/11, and it needs your help


The 11Eleven Project is creating a global experience for 11/11/11, and it needs your help

With just two more days to go until the unique date 11/11/11, there are bound to be a ton of interesting things planned all over the world to mark the day.

We’re guessing there’s going to be a fair share of weddings and parties, but there’s one event that everyone all over the world can take part in. The 11Eleven Project has put out a call encouraging people to create a global collective experience for that one day.

To take part, all you have to do is submit videos, photographs or songs you’ve created, capture sounds from your day, blog or even tweet, using the Twitter hashtag #11ElevenProject. You have until November 22nd to get your submission in by uploading it to SoundCloud, Flickr and YouTube or Vimeo.

To rein in the submissions a little bit, participants have to adhere to certain topics, but the topics themselves are broad enough to allow for a lot of creative leeway. The 11 topics are Beginnings, Heartbreak, Make a Wish, Faith, Routine, Water, Courage, Play, Darkness, Beauty and Love.

A world music collection will be created, produced by none other than singer Imogen Heap, and a photo book will be created using the photos, tweets and blog posts sent in from all over the world. There will even be a two-hour documentary created using the video submissions, with the sounds submitted forming the film’s score.

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The final product should be ready by September 2012, to be screened for free around the world. And true to the collective experience, anyone can host a screening—on the condition that they can get a minimum of 100 viewers and have the required equipment. The film will also be available for purchase on DVD or as a download via iTunes and Netflix.

The idea behind the project is:

To plant a seed of compassion in the world and allow people all over the planet to gain a perspective of this crazy rock that we all live on. Are people from different parts of the world really that different? Different cultures may have different traditions, but we’re pretty sure a teacher in Madagascar is trying to achieve the same as a teacher in the USA, or a Muslim father wants the same for his children as a Jewish father! We want this to be used as a time capsule for people to look back on and see how the world was in 2011.

The project is a great initiative in which the lines between creator and audience are blurred, and anyone’s voice can be heard and everyone’s story can be told—which is something the world is desperately in need of. It’s going to be a long wait until next September to see the final product, but we’re guessing it will be worth the wait.

The 11Eleven Project also has an iPhone app available for free download which you can use to submit images of any elevens you spot in the wild.

To find out more about how to participate, check out the guidelines for each type of submission and the video about the project below:

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