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

Anguish

Andrea, an 18-year old art student represents COVID19 quarantine with a photo called “Anguish”. Fleeing political persecution, she recently moved to the UK with her family from Venezuela.

Ayubowan

There is a big ‘No’ to traditional European greetings such as hand shakes and hugs according to health instructions. Hence the Sri Lankan community was very excited about their traditional way of greeting ‘Ayubowan’ as it is very safe.

The walk

This picture symbolises what feels like a lifetime’s pursuit of freedom, despite the personal costs, and how nice it is to not walk this path alone. We took this photo on our first hike during semi-lockdown. It is a dedication to my quarantine-buddy!

Bad haircut from behind

I decided to cut my own hair because the barber was closed, and I knew that if my hair grew, I would look bad and feel bad. I would feel ugly, I don’t want that. The lockdown affects me personally.

Home farm

The family kept chickens during lockdown to give their children something to do and look after. Chicks were born. Eggs were hatched. Vegetables were also grown.

Food art

Under lockdown cooking, artistically arranging, taking and sharing photos of home-made dishes has become a pleasurable pastime.

We are all in this together... the media keeps repeating that we're all in the same boat and this isn't quite right. The virus is impacting the lives of people differently and there is no point in denying this.

During those weeks, my books became my weapon to fight my boredom, anxiety, worries about the future and feelings of immobility. I used my plenty of time in doing the thing I love most - reading books.

If you think artists are useless try to spend quarantine without music, books, poems, movies and paintings.

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.

Enter the gallery

Lonely Streets

Created by a group of Syrian refugees living in Malaysia. The stunning video of lonely streets under lockdown is framed around Mwaffaq’s poem to ‘Mother Earth’. It brings together reflections on multiple overlapping crises around inequality, migration, health and environment, in the lonely streets of Kuala Lumpur. It includes an original music score, using Tango and classical Arabic tunes.

Miss my friends...

Fuck Corona

“Im a nurse and I saw 50 + people dying in one care home from corona …. lonely ; (“

Ramadan under lockdown

A failed asylum seeker in Berlin is showing the impact of the pandemic on a previously packed mosque. In the middle of Ramadan it is almost completely empty with only a very few people who have registered being allowed to attend.

Portrait of my Mother

Under lockdown, Amir, a 16 year old-refugee boy drew his mother after the style of artist, David Therron. He describes the picture in terms of watching someone drown but being unable to save them, due to panic. It is a deeply personal depiction of his mother and the many journeys they have endured to find safety and security.

Singing to Motherland

Gabriel Smit, a Venezuelan migrant in Colombia sings to his motherland, in the hope that the future will be brighter for him and all his fellow citizens.

Hell is empty, all the devils are here

From Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’— Act 1, Scene 1. These words are spoken by Ariel but here are applied to life under Corona Virus by a 16-year old Iranian Kurdish girl living in Germany.

Aisha talks about her life under lockdown

“For the vast majority of people Cov-19 is a curse but for Syrians living under siege and bombings, it came as a blessing. The guns went silent.” Translated by her husband Ahmad.

What is left of our home

“This is what is left of our tents after the fire – nothing! Media tell you to go and self-isolate at home. What home? People have no idea what life in a refugee camp is. We lost our homes back in our country and now we have lost our tent here in this camp. Of course, the authorities didn’t want us to take pictures, but we took them anyway. People should see what’s happening”.

Learning piano

A young girl taught herself to play the piano during lockdown.

We are one

This poem by Sa’adi, a Kurdish poet, is on the wall of Omar’s room. It has sustained him throughout lockdown. It is a constant reminder, he says, of our common humanity. He says he felt he was making a home in Germany but during Covid he has experienced several very upsetting episodes of racism. He now feels expulsed, spurned, infected so the poem helps restore a sense of calm.

Blog

Latest publications

Here you will find our latest academic papers, policy briefings, testimonies from asylum seekers and refugees, as well as creative writing.

Read our blog

Unlocking the archive: Precarity, Solidarity and the Politics of Hope.

by admin | 17 Dec 2020

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

by admin | 17 Dec 2020

“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

by admin | 17 Dec 2020

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...

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