The Cambridge Matchbox Project @ The Shop

The Shop’s window, 6th-12th June

Three years in Cambridge gets you used to taking something small with limited potential, and turning it into something enjoyable. Just look at Cambridge as a city, Life, a student’s budget… The mini-exhibition currently on show in The Shop’s window provides another example of making a little go a long way. The students involved have each taken a simple, everyday object – a matchbox – and turned it into a little nugget of art.

The Cambridge Matchbox project gave 40 students a matchbox to manipulate, elaborate, animate, and generally artistically appropriate in any way they saw fit. The finished products are being sold online for a small sum, and the proceeds are going to charity. This innovative approach to altruism makes the matchboxes even more enjoyable, and the fact that the exhibition is in a window means that you can show your appreciation for this project without taking any time out of your (pre- or post-exam) day: just take a leisurely stroll down Jesus Lane, and peruse as you pass. Perfect!

The matchbox designs range from quirky, to tongue in cheek, to just a little bit cute. When I visited the window exhibition, even a drunk homeless guy who couldn’t cycle straight stopped to look at them (and he didn’t even ask if I had any spare change).

It’s nice to see that even in the midst of exam term, a period in which many of us only have eyes for that mountain of past papers, Olly Rees (the organiser, or perhaps you could even stretch to calling him the curator), and the participants found some time to indulge in an act of creative originality which could benefit a charity. I really hope the Matchbox Project happens again, with even more participants and on an even bigger scale.

Some of my favourite boxes include the poetically inspired: ‘If I should die think only this of me, That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England’ (filled with grass), and another filled with tiny origami birds.

One matchbox wins my ‘Most Inspiring and Pithy Statement of the Day’ prize, with its slogan: ‘Don’t be an oak tree in a flower pot.’ The students involved with this project have certainly (and in some cases literally) broken out of the box.

READ: More about The Cambridge Matchbox Project HERE