The founders have developed an “intimate media” platform, a serene spot for a close-knit circle of friends and family, without the superficial likes or tweets of other social media.

When a friend and colleague of Karolien Emmers passed away, she looked in vain for a digital place where she had more space to honour his inspiring life than in a condolence register or card. “Both of us also felt a strong need to preserve the life stories of our grandparents,” says Sarah Callens, who established Hello My Dear with her friend Emmers.

The two Flemings felt that social media such as Facebook were inadequate because of the flippancy of the conversations, the gathering of “likes”, the advertising and the games. Their website, launched two months ago on 1 November, is an example of “intimate media”, where you share emotionally valuable information with a limited group of family and friends on a platform without commercial or entertainment elements.

They discussed the project among their own circles and visited rest homes, where they were met with much interest. “The need to transmit your life story is universal and timeless,” says Callens, who lives in Brussels. “Just as cavemen left rock inscriptions, we now leave an advanced digital print.”

Getting to know you

You can structure a lively timeline on Hello My Dear with photos, slides, postcards, audio fragments and video. By inviting people to comment, you expand everybody’s knowledge of the subject’s personal history, while at the same time improving contacts within the circle. Callens, for example, discovered that her grandmother once worked at a factory producing Cuban cigars and at a company creating tan products from chicory. “Such tales bring more colour into her life story,” she says.

Hello My Dear brings together people who can’t often talk in person. One woman created an online portrait of her grandson, who lives in the United States, as a Christmas gift. “They could reminisce about his childhood at Christmas dinner and, when he is away again, he can keep family and friends up to date with his own illustrations of life over there,” explains Callens.

Apart from holidays, occasions for making a portrait are weddings, anniversaries and funerals – when life is celebrated or mourned. To help the mourning process, Callens and Emmers are also collaborating with Kamo, a Flemish company that provides QR codes for gravestones or urns. When scanning the code with a smartphone, you are directed to their portrait on Hello My Dear or the person’s own website.

Digital diaries

The website can serve as a meeting place, but there are many different possibilities. The family of a woman with dementia, for instance, is using the website not only to provide the children with a multi-layered view of their grandma’s life but also to stimulate her memory. A woman in her 30s uses it as a modern diary, documenting the important events of her life in a private portrait that only she can access.

Emmers and Callens are creating an interactive biography of the contemporary Flemish cartoonist Gerard Alsteens (better known as GAL), and museums and universities are interested in using Hello My Dear as a tool for visualising history.

The founders regularly organise workshops for anyone interested and start projects in schools where children can create a portrait for and with their grandparents. Currently, the website is only in Dutch, but an English version is in the works.

www.hellomydear.be