If you would like to bring The Love Lettering Project to your event or workplace, host a writing workshop or having Lindsay speak about community engagement, please contact Lindsay at loveletteringproject [at] gmail.com

What do you love about where you live?

The Love Lettering Project is a community engagement project that asks participants to write letters about what they love about where they live. Since 2004, Lindsay Zier-Vogel has been spreading civic love by asking people to create these anonymous love letters to their cities, slip them into The Love Lettering Project’s signature airmail envelopes marked “love.” and distribute them anonymously throughout their communities.

Thousands of people have participated in over 250 Love Lettering Project events. This internationally acclaimed collaborative project has the capacity to transform individuals’ relationship to their communities through social engagement.

In addition to many events in her hometown of Toronto, Lindsay and The Love Lettering Project have travelled to Canada’s north, a five-city tour of the U.K., Brazil and New York City, with pop-up events toured the U.S. with stops in Chicago, Boston, L.A. and Atlanta. The Love Lettering Project was featured in Riverside, California for the 2016 Smithsonian Museum Day, and travelled to Washington D.C. and Virginia to launch Melody Warnick’s book, This Is Where You Belong. Lindsay has leading place-based writing workshops through the Toronto Public Library system, with funding from the Ontario Arts Council. The Love Lettering Project was the basis for the David Suzuki Foundation’s 2016 international 30×30 campaign and launched the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Weston Family Learning Centre in Toronto. Lindsay has also partnered with the Word On The Street festival, the Toronto Public Library system, the Toronto District School Board, Tourism Toronto, the Canadian High Commission in London, England, among others.

Lindsay’s debut novel, Letters to Amelia, is an epistolary book exploring the life of Amelia Earhart  and, her debut kids’ book Dear Street, is a Love Lettering Project-based picture book is coming out with Kids Can Press in May 2023.

The Love Lettering Project has been deemed one of the 50 reasons to love Toronto by Toronto Life magazine and has been featured in international media, including The Atlantic’s CityLab, NPR, The Londonist, CBC Television’s The National, Global National News, CTV’s Canada AM, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and CBC Radio’s World Report. Lindsay is also a frequent contributor to CBC Radio’s Metro Morning. (More press details here).

Photo by Phillipa Croft

About Lindsay

When she’s not love lettering, Lindsay works as a writer and arts educator. She studied contemporary dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, received her B.A. as an English Specialist at the University of Toronto and has completed an M.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto under the advisorship of award winning novelist, Anne Michaels. Her first novel Letters to Amelia comes out with Book*Hug Press in 2022, and she has two place-based picture books coming out with Kids Can Press in 2022 and 2023.

Her work has been published in various publications including The Letters Page (University of Nottingham), The Toronto Star, Gooselane’s Where The Nights Are Twice As Long: Love Letters from Canadian Poets, Watermarks: Writing by Lido Lovers and Wild Swimmers (Frogmore Press/Pells Pool, UK), The Temz Review, The Quarantine Review (Dundurn Press), The Lampeter Review, Taddle Creek, Descant, and Grain and Her hand-bound books of poetry have been added to the permanent collection at the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library and she is one of three contributors to the popular swimming blog, Swimming Holes We Have Known.

Lindsay has been working as an arts educator in schools and communities since 2001 and she is currently the Program Director of Word-Play’s Writing In The City creative writing program for youth in Toronto.  She has also done interactive guest lectures about community engagement and placemaking at Humber College, the Toronto Public Library, and at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, the University of Toronto’s English Department, and in Montreal through Concordia’s University of the Streets program.

 

There are three key components to the project:

1). Reflecting on what you love about the city you live in

The shift in perspective from seeing what needs to be fixed to what works in a city is a powerful shift indeed. This social engagement promotes a greater sense of well-being and civic pride.

2). The creation of the love letter 

The project provides an opportunity for members of the community to engage with the written word and paper arts in a judgment-free, accessible forum. Lindsay then takes a photo of each letter created to add to this site, as well as to Twitter and the Love Lettering Project Instagram page.

3). Individuals take their love letter and hide it anonymously for a stranger to find

This final step asks participants to further engage with their physical community, hiding their love letter for a stranger to find with no personal agenda other than the simple pleasure of sharing joy.