Salt Lake Community College’s Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center, in collaboration with the Culture Collective, invites you to join in a free Valentine’s Day letter-writing event.
Hosted at the GSSRC (room 1-140 at the South City Campus) from 9-11 a.m. on Thursday, this event will provide all of the materials needed to write love letters from one stranger to another.
“It’s a unique experience that allows you to share a positive message for someone you don’t know, who might need it. It also makes you reflect on what you would need [or] want to hear if you were getting a love letter,” says Timothy Langan, SLCC business major and peer mentor at the GSSRC.
This letter-writing event is part of a series of similar events planned by the Culture Collective to help spread positive energy in the world, by coming together to write love letters to strangers who might need a kind word or positive message.
“I’m hoping it’s a reminder to everyone, as Valentine’s Day approaches, that there are so many different ways to spread love in the world that have nothing to do with couples and dating, and more to do with thinking about the people and the world around us and how we can care,” says Langan.
Letter writers have the option to write a letter to someone specific and deliver it themselves, or write it to a stranger and leave it somewhere randomly to be found. They can also leave the letter they’ve written with the event staff who will distribute them throughout the Salt Lake Valley and all the SLCC campuses.
“We are excited to be partnering with the SLCC Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center to incorporate a Valentine’s edition to the campus,” says Culture Collective founder and social architect, Bahaa Chmait.
This isn’t the first time that SLCC and the Culture Collective have worked together. The Culture Collective has been hosting pop-up events, like this Love Letters event, in public spaces throughout Salt Lake with the mission to improve well-being in communities, using diverse forms of art and creativity since 2018.
Last year, the Culture Collective worked with the SLCC Community Writing Center at Pride Festival and other letter-writing events to fill the CWC’s old-fashioned letterbox and share love, pride and culture with others.
“Getting a handwritten letter is a unique experience anymore, so I think anytime someone takes a moment to write a love letter it’s always uplifting and special,” muses Langan.
