We Will Sing: Letters to the Future
Write your letter to the future and be part of a new artwork.
We Will Sing is a new artwork inspired by Salts Mill and Bradford’s textile heritage. Created by artist Ann Hamilton for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, We Will Sing opens in May 2025 – and you can be a part of the work.
Hamilton is inviting us all to write a Letter to the Future, connecting our memories of the past and what we love about the present to tomorrow’s world and the people who’ll live in it. What do you think the future needs to know? What would you share with it, and what could you teach it? What stories would you tell the future – and what do you hope the future never forgets?
Click here to read Hamilton’s invitation, and then scroll down for guidance and inspiration on writing and sending your Letter to the Future. A selection of the letters we receive will be featured in the We Will Sing newspaper (available exclusively in the installation at Salts Mill), read aloud during the installation and/or reproduced on the Letters to the Future website. Write soon!
Writing and submitting your letter
Once you’ve read Ann Hamilton’s invitation, you’ll have everything you need to write your Letter to the Future. We’d love to receive as many handwritten letters as possible, but you can also type your letter if you’d prefer. Please keep your letter anonymous, free from any personal details that might identify you or anyone else. And when you’ve written your letter, you can send it to us in one of three ways:
Online: Submit your letter online using the form below
By post: Please send your letters to:
The Future
c/o Bradford 2025
1A Aldermanbury
Bradford BD1 1SD
In person (from 3 May 2025): Drop off your letter in person when you visit the installation at Salts Mill.
Please note that by writing and submitting your Letter to the Future, you’re agreeing to it being displayed and/or read aloud in We Will Sing, featured on the project’s website, reproduced in news media, and physically/digitally archived for the future. Letters that contain personal information and/or offensive language may be edited or not used. Read more in our privacy policy.
Letters to the Future
An introduction from Ann HamiltonA wish, a poem, a song, a memory, an essay, a story, a sense, a description, a history, a list, a book, offered to the future
Digital technology has amplified the speed and distance of our reach, but a letter – words set to paper in pencil or ink, written in silence – is still a hand-carried thing. Folded, placed in a stamped envelope, the letter might travel across time zones to land some days or weeks later at your door: a material connection between you, the reader, and the writer. The weight and smell of the paper, and the image on the stamp, communicate as surely as whatever the letter might contain – news, congratulations or condolences, ideas or feelings.
History is full of correspondence that has crossed oceans and endured over decades of friendship. Bundled in string, stored in trunks, saved in attics – each letter is a form of touch, a looking-back and a looking-forward. Every letter stitches the near-at-hand to the faraway from a particular place in time.
What might you write in a letter addressed to the future, to a not-yet time and place? What does the future need to remember? What stories need repeating? What knowledge needs passing on? Perhaps these questions will help you write your own Letter to the Future.
– Ann Hamilton
January 2025
A wish, a poem, a song, a memory, an essay, a story, a sense, a description, a history, a list, a book, offered to the future
Digital technology has amplified the speed and distance of our reach, but a letter – words set to paper in pencil or ink, written in silence – is still a hand-carried thing. Folded, placed in a stamped envelope, the letter might travel across time zones to land some days or weeks later at your door: a material connection between you, the reader, and the writer. The weight and smell of the paper, and the image on the stamp, communicate as surely as whatever the letter might contain – news, congratulations or condolences, ideas or feelings.
History is full of correspondence that has crossed oceans and endured over decades of friendship. Bundled in string, stored in trunks, saved in attics – each letter is a form of touch, a looking-back and a looking-forward. Every letter stitches the near-at-hand to the faraway from a particular place in time.
What might you write in a letter addressed to the future, to a not-yet time and place? What does the future need to remember? What stories need repeating? What knowledge needs passing on? Perhaps these questions will help you write your own Letter to the Future.
– Ann Hamilton
January 2025
Things to consider...
- What does the future need to know?
- What skills will the future need?
- What do you love and want the future to keep hold of?
- If you think of the future as a coat, with what would you fill its pockets?
And there’s more: Ann Hamilton has written some prompts, questions and inspirations for your Letter to the Future. You can read or download them at the We Will Sing website.
Thanks in advance for writing a Letter to the Future. See you at Salts Mill from May 2025 for We Will Sing.
Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
