Postcrossing Blog

Remember Audrey (aka audreyyung), the little girl from Macao that we featured on the blog some years ago? Audrey is now 8 years old, and has received so many postcards through Postcrossing and other swaps that she made her own postcard exhibition!

The exhibition took place last month at the Fundação Rui Cunha, in Macao. The postcards were hanged around the room in thin wires within reach so that the visitors could interact with them, and there were also posters in 3 languages explaining Postcrossing. Despite the current circumstances, lots of people visited (including her classmates and teachers!) and Audrey was even interviewed for the local TV and radio stations, as well as the Macao Daily newspaper!

All the images on this post came from the Fundação Rui Cunha website, where you can browse more photos from the exhibition and even see a video of the event. We love how the exhibition turned out, and are super proud of Audrey and her dad Alan’s achievements — well done! 🎉

Remember the Sister Cities of Düsseldorf call for postcards we did a few months ago? The day of Düsseldorf, Haifa, Chemnitz and Reading’s jubilee finally arrived last weekend, and with it the opening of the fantastic exhibition created with all your postcards!

Sonja (aka Sonne89) from the Mayor’s office reported that it was a perfect sunny day when Düsseldorf’s mayor and delegations from the other sister cities opened the exhibition, and the atmosphere was happy, with lots of enthusiastic visitors. She sent us some nice pictures that their intern Claire took, so that we could share them with you! Without further ado…

In total, they received almost 500 postcards from 79 different countries, all with messages of joy and celebration. They even took a few quotes from the postcards and printed them on the walls, with the postcards hanging from the ceiling!

Doesn’t that look amazing? All those postcards within easy reach, the quotes, the wall of postcards they built… they even set up a little mailbox, so that visitors could send a postcard on the opening weekend, and over 60 people took the opportunity to write to their beloved ones! :)

I confess I’m getting a little teary eyed looking at all these photos… Isn’t this amazing? We brought a world of kind wishes to Düsseldorf! 😊 And if you’d like to experience it yourself, there’s still time to see it: the Sister Cities exhibition will be shown on Café Europa (Marktplatz 6A) for the next 3 weeks. If you’re in the area, don’t miss it!

Our huge thank you to Sonja, Claire and Vera of Düsseldorf’s Mayor’s office for this wonderful experience. On top of putting all of it together, they’ve generously written over 100 postcards back to postcrossers who included their email addresses on the postcards. Thank you! ❤️

All photos by Claire Brantley

Salut everyone!

Today we’d like to tell you about a group of enthusiastic postcrossers from Romania and Moldova who have recently come together in Chișinău to celebrate their hobby. Being from neighbouring countries with many traditions and a language in common (not to mention a hobby!), it just made sense for them to cross the border and meet… and also to try to make Postcrossing more popular in Moldova.

In order to do this, they organised a collaborative exhibition and a meetup, which took place in Moldova’s main post office on July 29th. It was a huge success! Here are some pictures from this event:

The stands around the post office were filled with postcards either sent to the exhibition by other postcrossers, or from the collections of the postcrossers in attendance, who took the opportunity to showcase some of their favourite postcards and tell interesting postal stories. For instance, did you know that a lot of postcards to Moldova are sent to Maldives by mistake?

It was a busy day in the post office, as it was the last day of the month and many people were around to pay their bills. Many of them saw the exhibition while waiting, curiously checking out what this big group of people were doing around the table. The postcrossers were a busy bunch: together, they sent over 600 postcards to all around the world, bearing a special cancellation mark that Moldova Post did specifically for the occasion. Even the national news station came to check out what all the commotion was about!

Bravo, everyone! A big thank you to Olga (aka Elyna333) and Mihnea (aka MihneaR) for organising the meeting, to Moldova Post for letting them use the space, to the UFRM (The Philatelic Union of Moldova) for letting them use their stands, and last but not least, to everyone who participated and helped put together such an inspiring event!

Ever heard of Postcrossing Ambassadors? They’re members who go the extra mile to spread the word about the project to help it grow, writing articles on newspapers or magazines, giving interviews to TV stations or organizing events to popularize the hobby, among many other remarkable contributions.

Jifeng (aka shijifeng) from China, is one of our most enthusiastic ambassadors, and this summer he was involved in the organization of a huge art exhibition + event that is all about postcards and Postcrossing!

“Postrip — Post a word, mark the world” is the name of this fantastic exhibition that is currently being shown in Shanghai, celebrating postcards as a way of connecting the world, sharing memories and creating travel mementos. The exhibition features postcards, sketches, souvenirs and travel journals from five local postcrossers (arlynab, shijifeng, SuzyLiu, uranusreborn, wangjiayimike). Their items were beautifully put together in displays, which were then surrounded by their testimonials, as well as explanations on how Postcrossing works.

Have a look:

Isn’t it just stunning? The care and attention to detail on these walls and displays is awe-inspiring.

Pulling off something like this would be enough to make anyone proud… but Jifeng decided to push it a bit further, and used the occasion of the exhibition to organize also a meetup, postcard fair and set of talks about Postcrossing, in which the five postcrossers who participated in the exhibition were invited to tell the stories behind the postcards they chose to display.

As an added bonus, a special themed postcard was printed, and Shanghai Post even created a cancellation mark for the occasion so that postcrossers could send their commemorative cards with it. The event took place this past Saturday (July 15th), and judging by the photos, it was a huge success!

Hurray! 🎉 Though the event is now over, you can still visit the exhibition until September 24th, on Shanghai Mass Art Centre (125 Guyi Rd, Xuhui Qu, Shanghai). If you’re in the area, don’t miss it!

Our huge thank you to Jifeng for doing all of this — but also to arlynab, SuzyLiu, uranusreborn and wangjiayimike for their collaboration both in the event and the exhibition. It sounds like a brilliant team effort, and we hope it will inspire other postcrossers to follow their lead! 😊

Remember back in July, when the Singapore Philatelic Museum asked everyone’s collaboration with Harry Potter postcards for their newest thematic exhibition? Mishelle Lim from the museum recently wrote back to let us know the responses to this call for postcards were stunning, and that they’ve received almost 100 beautiful postcards — including hand-made ones and some bearing Harry Potter stamps. Woohoo! Ten points to Gryffindor Postcrossing!

The museum is now busy replying to the submissions, but have sent back some photos of the exhibition which opened last month. Have a look:

Merlin’s beard… that looks amazing! We’re always in awe of SPM’s exhibitions — you can tell they work hard on all the details to really take the experience to the next level.

If you’re in the area or planning to visit Singapore in the next few months, “Collecting Magic: From Stamps to Wands” will be open until June 2017.