About the T-Shirt Archive

This is an idea that came up during the IJBC in Israel in 2004. The staff had asked participants to bring CISV shirts for an exhibition during AIM. Some people (James (USA), Per (SWE) and others) thought, how couol would it be, if we would create an online archive with all the shirts that were ever printed in CISV. I am the kind of person, who likes great ideas to happen, so in January 2005, I set up a weblog and started posting pictures there. I advertised the site through CISV-L and the IJB website and - hooray - more and more people started contributing pictures.

As the site grew to be quite popular (around 100 visitors every day and more than 100 shirts posted) I decided it to be worthwile to add some more features, and make the archive more than just a weblog: Now people can vote on shirts and more things are about to come.

Purpose

When James and I discussed the idea in the beginning, the main purpose was FUN. Both of us are CISV-crazy enough, that we find it fanscinating, just to see all those different shirts that people created. Besides the ones, that we had seen worn by other CISVers, we were also curious to discover really old CISV shirts.

Meanwhile, I have thought about the site a lot, and consider that it could have a meaning in many other ways:

  • Archiving all shirts ist just another way of demonstrating a part of the CISV culture. It's part of the CISV identity, of our culture, creating new shirts every year and trading them during camp time.
  • CISV's shirt designers deserve a place where their work is archived and honoured. And for future designers this is a place to find inspiration what to and maybe also what not to create.
  • Having people check the website on a regular basis, voting and commenting on shirts is another way of creating a year-long CISV community.
  • Some of the contributed pictures can be used for (on- and offline) CISV publications.
  • Once we have enough pictures here, I would like to create a "meta-shirt": A shirt with pictures of other CISV-shirts on it.

How to include CISV-shirts on your website

If you want to display a "CISV-shirt of the day", somewhat like the IJB website is doing (check it out), all you have to do is include the following script into your website:


<script language=javascript src=http://www.absolutpicknick.de/cisvshirts/thumbdayshirt_js.php></script>

About Nick

Maybe a few words about "Curator" of the T-shirt archive: I am 30 years old, German, live in Hamburg and I went through the whole CISV career when I was younger (village, JC, seminar camp, IPP). I'm used to be very active in CISV international, was an active junior for a while, and dedicated a few years of my life to committee work. In my real life I'm training to be a Cardiologist, but love to spend time designing T-shirts, party flyers, and websites.