Yay, I can finally announce...

Last week I wrote a brief. A creative brief. Possibly the first creative brief of this sort I've ever written. It's for something called '26 Treasures' - an exhibition of words that will take place inside the British Galleries 1500-1760 at the V&A in London in September, as part of the London Design Festival (LDF).

This is the thing I've been sharing in little chunks since January. And now that it's official, and really rather exciting, I can tell the story about how it all began.

On a slightly boring January afternoon, I was sitting in my armchair at home reading Twitter. Boring, boring, hmm, nope boring, boring. Boring. Soon I got frustrated reading my own boring tweets and opened a link posted by an artist called Mel McDonald. Mel and I became Twitter friends last year while I was travelling around Britain by full moon and she was photographing and painting my favourite part of Britain - Cornwall. In today's tweet, Mel had linked to an article from the Guardian website.

In 'Why Monet's art haunts my dreams', Jonathan Jones wrote:

Last night I dreamed about a painting. It was Claude Monet's Bathers at La Grenouillère (1869), on display at London's National Gallery. (Except that in my dream, it became a black-and-white photograph.) In this painting, people at leisure are glimpsed in a spatter of dancing light: a group of three figures stand on a jetty, fragmented silhouettes against the brightness, while boats, bodies and water flicker hauntingly in the haze.

There I was, in body, sitting beside a window in Waltham Abbey, Essex, a few miles north of London, under grey sky, reading a website article written by a man, probably in London, probably sitting near a window, probably under a grey sky, typing words onto a computer screen. But there I was, in my mind, somewhere in golden France, gazing at people at leisure, spatters of dancing light, fragmented silhouettes, water flickering hauntingly in the haze. I could hear excited children run through crisp grass, hear boats tied to a rickety jetty bobbing and nudging each other. I could smell summer.

And in my head something happened. An idea arrived, triggered by this paragraph, by Jonathan, by Monet, by my senses, my imagination. I sent a message to Mel - 'Thank you, you've just given me an idea'. I emailed my creative design partner Dan (you can see the email here). And I got so excited, so charged, so fearful of the idea I'd just had, my eyes filled.

Copy Is Art.

Copy is art. It seemed so simple. In just 71 words, somebody had painted an image for me. It didn't matter that I didn't know Bathers at La Grenouillère; Jonathan Jones's perfect choice of words had put a beautiful painting into a place beyond images. Imagination.

I work in words every day. In business, people call words 'copy'. In 'copywriting', a lot of businesses call copy 'content'. In content we have images, actions, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, fears, passions, verbs and adjectives and concrete nouns and abstract nouns and lists and scenes and journeys and relationships and characters and smells and textures and-- we have all this condensed into one word. One lifeless word.

But as I sat at Grenouillère, mothers trying to control Jacque and Florence and Claude and Laurent, the boats paddling on Jonathan's flickering water, I understood the power of words. In books, in scripts, in poetry, in letters, emails, posters, websites - and especially in business. And I realised that copy isn't content, it's art.

I sent a Twitter message to John Simmons. And in a show of utter immodesty, I told him I'd had a good idea that he might be interested in hearing about.

Within a week or two, we were sitting in a gallery in London, sipping tea and coffee, eating cake, and talking words and art. I showed him a proposal I'd created. On one page I put this

I tried to do to JMW Turner's Fighting Temeraire what Jonathan Jones had done to Monet's waterside scene.

John liked the idea. He said 26 would be interested. He said the LDF might be interested. He asked me to create a proposal for the LDF. With the help of Dan, I did.

Over the next couple of weeks, Copy Is Art developed into 26 Treasures (as John poured his creativity into the idea). As the LDF embraced the project, and then together John and Ben from the LDF successfully pitched it to the V&A, works of art became artefacts, objects, treasures: pieces of history showcased in the museum. 'A number of treasures' became '26 treasures'. And a small idea inspired by reading a small paragraph became part of an international exhibition.

Before we could catch breath, Maura Dooley and Andrew Motion had become two of our 26 writers. And then the LDF highlighted 26 Treasures as one of the top four projects in this year's festival (out of 200).

So last week's brief went out to 26 writers. These writers have been randomly paired with an object in the British Galleries in the V&A - a delicate locket, an 18th-century bust of Homer, Mr Nobody with a Drinking Glass, and more. And in just 62 words (remember Jonathan conjured his images in just 71), we're asking these writers to reflect and respond. But here's the twist.

We're not looking for anything dry, descriptive, historical. We want to know what these treasures mean to the people who are writing about them. We've called this project '26 Treasures' because each object chosen is a treasure - to the museum, to the country, to a collection, to a collector, and, most importantly, to the people who shared their lives with it. We want writers to treasure these pieces and let them into their lives.

Here's the piece I wrote and designed for the proposal to the V&A

On Saturday 18th September 2010, the V&A will host 26 Treasures. They'll invite everybody to come and see the treasures, read the words, and feel inspired. 26 Treasures will ask an international audience to take an hour out of their busy lives to do nothing more than reflect.  

And perhaps, through the power, the beauty, the endless possibilities of loved words, we'll be able to take visitors on some journeys: through the museum, through our writers' imaginations, and through history.