Welcome to The Thread
A guided letter-writing course to tune in to what matters and connect deeper with life.
Give the gift of focused attention and open exploration
Join The Thread for an experience like no other. Over the next year, you'll reflect on the things that really matter (to you). In a simple, handwritten letter once a month, you'll learn about yourself, and explore how you want to show up - for yourself, your communities, and the planet.
What is The Thread?
The Thread is a year-long course, a mindful present, a collective art piece, a manifesto for a better world, a journal in the form of 24 letters, a stationery set, and a chance to get to know yourself and the world a little better.
Over the next year, you'll receive monthly prompts to write a letter to your future self - and if you choose to join the collective, you get to write a letter so someone else, too. And receive one!
Each letter is a fragment of a conversation, a thread to weave into the story of all who participate. The prompts loosely follow the seasons in the northern hemisphere and will be on themes that invite you to detach from the pressures of modern day society, learn to listen, remember to feel , foster understanding for others and inquire what's important to you.
The Thread is sort of like a yearly planner, but a bit more spiritual. A bit like a self-improvement course, but without the idea that you're not good enough. It's an invitation to reconnect to our shared humanity.
How does it work?
At its core, The Thread is a year of guided letter writing. A commitment to take a little timeout once a month to reflect and get to know yourself a little better.
You get a set of artist-designed, quality printed stationery to help inspire you and get hands-on. Our brains work differently when we get away from the screen and work IRL, by going offline, we allow our brains to make new connections and explore a little deeper. Your starter pack includes instructions on how to join The Thread and what to expect from the experience throughout the year ahead.
We'll guide you through the year with a different theme to explore each month. The course will include inspirational content, optional exercises or activities, and podcast episodes as well as the main writing prompts.
You can choose if you want to keep the Thread experience to yourself, or join the collective.
Writing solo, you'll write 12 letters over the time of a year - to your future self.
If you join the collective, you'll write up to 24 letters and receive up to 12. So will everyone else who joins The Thread collective. So each month that you write to the collective, you'll also receive a letter from one of the other writers. A chance to see the world through someone else's eyes, to break out of the echo chamber of social media, and tap into a different kind of connection.
You can either bring a friend, a partner, or a loved one and write one-on-one or join the collective and get randomly assigned interesting people in the group to write to and receive letters from.
You can join The Thread any time. Your membership will be for 12 months. That said, it's the perfect mindful Christmas gift, if you write with a loved one, and a great way to frame the new year.
On your own, and in a collective
Each invite to The Thread comes with everything you need for a year of writing. Just bring your own pen.
It's up to you to choose if you want to write exclusively to your future self, a bit like a journal, or if you write a second letter each month, to share with someone else, joining the collective experience.
You can choose to:
- Join The Thread by yourself
Use the prompts to learn more about yourself, write one letter a month — make it as long as you like, you'll have double the amount of pages — save the letters, and read them all a year later. Amazing to enquire what's important to you. - Join The Thread and write with the collective
You'll also write a letter to yourself each month, and each month you can opt-in to write a second letter to someone else in The Thread collective. (And receive one back!) Learn more about yourself, and get some else's reflections to see the world through different eyes. - Join The Thread with a "+1"
Buy two invites, one for you and one to gift to someone you want to get to know better. You write one letter to yourself each month, and write your second letter to each other. A meaningful way to deepen a relationship — no matter if you write with a lover, a friend, a business partner, or a family member.
The Thread is offered on a sliding scale. You choose your own price:
£60 is a fair deal for both us us — a fancy coffee a month less for you means we got all the costs covered and get to have a fancy coffee a month, too.
If money is really tight, choose a price from £10 that works for you, and if you have a little extra, £90+ help me offer the lower price points.
We don't intend to make a lot of profit with this, so any extra you can afford goes directly to making the sliding scale accessible to everyone who wants to join us.
If you would like to join and can't quite afford it now, please send us a quick note at thread@slow.works and we'll send you a discount code to register. No need to explain your financial situation. We're more interested in having your voice as part of the collective.
Reflecting in the Collective
The Thread as a whole consists of curious writers all around the globe, everyone will need to agree to our Code of Conduct and agree to respect each other. We want to make sure The Thread is a safe space to explore ideas you maybe didn't spell out yet, and we want to be open to considering ideas we haven't really considered yet.
Over the course of the year, we'll collectively write dozens and dozens of letters, many individual threads of conversation. And each time you share a letter with someone else, you receive a letter from another writer on The Thread. This allows us to literally bridge the gaps and start to make the world a bit smaller again.
We understand not everyone will be excited about sharing ideas with strangers, each month you get to choose if you want to write with the collective, with your +1, or by yourself.
Your Host
Jonas Haefele
Your guide on The Thread is going to be Slow Works founder Jonas Haefele.
Jonas is a designer by education and a techie by accident. After moving to London, he spent years in corporate training, teaching Fortune 500 companies about technology and innovation to up-level their workforce and accelerate transformation. In 2019, Jonas founded Slow Works to help organizations explore how to use technology mindfully while caring for the people and the planet. He's also co-founder of LGBTQ+ entrepreneur network Series Q, a yoga and mindfulness teacher, and has recently launched A Quick Pause, a podcast offering mindful practices to reconnect, heal and empower.
In his free time, Jonas likes to host dinners, bake sourdough, go for long walks in nature and generally move his body and nurture his soul.
Meet your inspiration
The Illustrators
Four amazing illustrators have been contributing letterhead designs for each month. They interpreted each month's theme in their own ways and created gorgeous letterheads for you to get inspired by and write your letters on.
Sophie Smiles
Winter
Sophie combines creative facilitation and illustration skills to enable collaboration and change communications. She is freelancing while studying Illustration and Visual Communication at Westminster University, London. She supports leaders in articulating their visions and creates space in which teams can creatively explore their ideas and solve problems. Her work is as much about the process as the pictures and is designed to cultivate open, productive and sustainable workplaces in the modern digital age.
Learn more about Sophie at sophiesmiles.co.uk.
Michaela Stavova
Spring
Michaela is a Czech/Swiss illustrator and animator. Drawing from her understanding of different cultures, she is offering various styles and techniques, which support clients' ideas and creatively develop their projects.
You can find more about her work on her portfolio and follow her on Instagram @michaelastavova.
Xara Bennett-Jones
Summer
Xara Bennett-Jones is an illustrator based in London. She works for the UN as a graphic designer and illustrates on a freelance basis. She's inspired by botanics and whimsy and enjoys drawing from myths and stories to create artworks.
You can find Xara as @titian.threads on Instagram.
Anders Tallvik
Autumn
Anders Tallvik is an Amsterdam-based conceptual graphic designer and art director who in a parallel universe might be working in music or fine art. His design work is a balancing act between structured research and freeform experimentation, always lead by the question "what if…?" and a focus on de-stressed workflows. His personal projects include analogue photography, printmaking, and illustration, all of which are ways to explore the interplay between creativity and meditative participation in the here and now.
You can follow Anders's work at @anderscreative on Instagram and at anders-creative.com.