Hi I’m Dinesh Thapa, a 2nd Year Media Production student at Coventry University. Inspired by the concept of ‘A Message in a Bottle’ and Humans of New York, I decided do a project asking the people of Coventry to leave a message in front of a camera.
The objective was to build a communication bridge between people who want to say something to another person or even themselves, but due to physical or mental restrictions can’t do so.
How the idea came up
As human beings we love to communicate, more importantly express how we feel about certain things or about someone. However, sometimes we feel restricted because of certain things. For example, we don’t have enough courage to say what we think in person, the timing is not right, the other person has already passed away, you feel like you need to let it out but not to people who you know, or you don’t know how to get in touch with the other person. The aim of this project was to overcome these restrictions.
After the video was shot and edited together, it was exhibited at the Glass Box Gallery with the work of other Media Production students, who did a project called ‘Humans Of Coventry’. Overall the exhibition was successful and received positive feedback.
The project was also an experiment to see if anyone had something they wanted to get off their chest, because experts at Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester, showed that people who bottle up their emotions are at higher risk of premature death, 35% to be exact.
What next?
To to try to fix this issue, I’m planning to carry on the project but instead of ‘A Message From People In Coventry’, it will be ‘A Message From People On Earth’, and people will be asked to send messages anonymously via www.peoplesmessages.tumblr.com. You can find the messages on my Instagram account @peoplesmessages.
