Hello! You found us 🙂 What’s this all about?
MagicTed aims to bring connection and joy to people’s lives, with the magic of teddy bears and maps! 🧸
Teddy bears have always meant a lot to me. Over the past year, I’ve been leaving teddy bears & soft toys in the wild – in public places, like benches on the seafront.
I also go to events with Teds looking for their new homes, complete with adoption certificates! I make labels for each Magic Ted, inviting people to take them on adventures and add a tag to our map here.
It’s lovely to see who adopts each Ted, and why they connect to it. I often wonder whose lives & homes the magical creatures have ended up in.
As well as a lifelong love for teddy bears, I also love big creative ideas. I have a background in tech so I thought it would be cool to track the teds on their adventures via QR codes and an online user-editable map.
I created this website to host an interactive map, to tag teds we find in the wild, and drop pins when we take them on adventures.
Our Teds have already travelled as far as the Great Wall of China, Mexico, Iceland, and Africa!
I’m a big fan of maps – they can be a powerful medium for connecting people. Alongside MagicTed, I hand-draw maps of made-up places, you can check them out here: www.EleanorsMaps.com
This website was launched in May 2024, so it’s simple for now. Keep checking in, take your teds for adventures, and stay in touch with your fellow magic teds around the globe. ✨
MagicTed was inspired by its sister project Ted Camp, a magical tent full of teddy bears & soft toys born in 2023 at a Burning Man UK festival, back again in 2024 as an official theme camp. We also went to MicroBurn and London DeCom in both 2023 and 2024. Did you meet us there? Take your ted for adventures beyond the burn, share them on our MagicTed map. 🙂
Finally, most importantly, I was inspired by my inner child. I find life incredibly challenging, struggling with a lot of trauma, neurodiversity, and everything that goes with it. Ted Camp & MagicTed are so simple, and give me real joy & hope. Teds have been a big part of my life, and I know many share that – and many more are yet to discover how much they need it too. So this is for all of us. The Teds too.
It feels like we are making a new community, bringing this connection and joy to our lives. It is so cool to start our days checking the map to see what adventures the teds – and their wonderful humans – are up to around the world! 🗺️