Creatively Chronicling Covid19
Explore this website to understand what life is like during the Covid-19 pandemic from the perspectives of creative asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants in the UK and around the world.
Read our Blogs – testimonies, creative writing, as well as research reports and briefings.
Browse our Gallery– videos, photos, word art, audio recordings, paintings and drawings.
Visit our Exhibition – a space of encounter and community engagement
Find out about research approach and partnerships.
Contact us if you want to share your experiences.
Why are we doing this? Our rich archive of digital cultural artefacts, images and voices, enables those who are often invisible or silenced to be seen and heard. This public intervention challenges the conventional politics of representation.
It documents acts of artful and creative resistance to marginalisation, and resilient responses to multiple overlapping crises. Together, in collaboration and solidarity, we are documenting this extraordinary moment in history, and co-creating a unique, living, growing archive giving insights into how we are coping creatively with Covid19.
Informed consent offered for all images. Full names withheld to protect contributors’ identities, unless otherwise requested.
covid 19
Gallery
Lockdown and other restrictions present an opportunity for the mainstream population to better understand the lives of asylum seekers and refugees, who have long since known confinement, isolation, fear of visible and invisible
enemies, and uncertainty about what the future may bring. Their “small acts” of artistic and creative resistance, documented here, prove their resilience and show the power of solidarity. Together we continue chronicling the dark
and lighter sides of Covid-19.
Blog
Latest publications
Here you will find our latest academic papers, policy briefings, testimonies from asylum seekers and refugees, as well as creative writing.

Unlocking the archive: Precarity, Solidarity and the Politics of Hope.
Unlocked Archive exhibition is a powerful testimony to the courage and hope kindled in every act of kindness. It documents the light and dark sides of the pandemic. Marie Gillespie and Helen Hintjens Since the sudden intrusion of COVID-19 in all our lives, its economic, political and...
The Right to Get Online
“Just Like Food on a Plate” Tom Cheesman, Marie Gillespie, Thanuja Hettiarachchi Digital poverty for asylum seekers now means almost total exclusion from society. This isolation has a devastating effect on mental health and wellbeing and creates enormous practical problems. It’s a human rights...
The Eviction of Pikpa Open Refugee Camp
Intro by Marie Gillespie This blog shows the December 2020 newsletter of Lesvos Solidarity – our partner in this project – consisting of a coalition of 450 organisations, movements and politicians working together in the struggle for refugee rights. The island of Lesvos has been a gateway to...

Get In Touch
We would love to hear from you. Please let us know what you think of the project, the art, and the issues.