WOULD YOUR LIFE CHANGE IF YOU WON THE LOTTERY?

Or maybe — how much would you need to win to change your life? To be Wealthy? 

“Money” is an inescapable part of our everyday: rent, groceries, bills. Where will it come from?  Where does it all go? However comfortable we may be (or uncomfortable, as many of us are), “Money” seems like a problem that demands constant attention.

“Wealth,” on the other hand, is something that happens to other people. We watch it religiously on TV: reality shows following the day to day of celebrities of affluence. We’re bombarded with advertisements: billboards and subway posters of bright shiny people in custom tailored clothing stepping into their luxury cars. “Wealth” is a fantasy—one that promises that it could fix everything.

But however much we think about these things, money is still a taboo subject. In fact “The Emily Post Institute,” self-assigned arbiters of etiquette, designate money as a “third-tier topic of conversation” - more inappropriate for polite company than sex or religion.

If We Win carves out a space for conversation in all that discomfort by asking participants to answer together a question that might not be just hypothetical: what would we do if we won the lottery?

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Creative Researcher Yannick Trapman-O'Brien is seeking participants for an exchange: 2 or 4 participants at a time will be given a lottery ticket with a top prize of no less than $25,000 per person; in return, they must agree on and set down in writing a plan for spending their winnings together.

If they win, the ticket is theirs to cash. If they lose, the ticket enters the archives of the research project, along with the written plan.