A Life in Lockdown
Representatives from Gloucester History Festival, Archives, Museums, Libraries, Strike A Light theatre company, religious communities, heritage organisations and the University of Gloucestershire are working together to capture Gloucestershire’s response to ‘A Life in Lockdown’.
We are working together to support and promote each other’s projects and we’re looking for your help too. We know that this is a challenging time for many people, so hope the opportunities to get creative and link up with others may appeal. We hope to share some of the initial ‘A Life in Lockdown’ outputs at this year’s Gloucester History Festival in September.
How you can get involved:
Gloucester History Festival
Pitch an idea for the Gloucester History Festival to create digital content. Thanks to a grant from Historic England, we have a few small commissions which will be decided by a community panel.
- Contact Kim.Kenny2 @gloucestershire.gov.uk before 6 July 2020 with your idea.
- Further information: https://gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk/about/gloucester-looking-up-digital-commissions-brief/
Gloucestershire Archives
Gloucestershire Archives @ Gloucestershire Heritage Hub gathers, keeps and shares the documentary heritage of Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire. We need your help to create a “living archive” of local life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Material which documents the impact of the pandemic will be an important addition to our existing records of previous public health emergencies, from mediaeval plagues to the 20th century outbreaks of Spanish flu and typhoid.
So, we’d like to encourage you to record your thoughts, feelings and experiences about this remarkable time in our lives. To do this, you could:
- write something
- take photos
- make a voice recording or film on your phone or tablet
- collect relevant pamphlets, newsletters and other information from local groups and organisations such as district councils, businesses and schools
There’s more detail on our website: Gloucestershire Archives' Covid-19 Appeal
- You can submit digital files online via https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/submit-a-deposit/
- Please hold on to any hard copy items for now. We will be able to accept them once we re-open.
Contact: archives @gloucestershire.gov.uk
The Museum of Gloucester
The Museum of Gloucester is inviting everyone in the county to capture their memories of #Gloucestershire during the period of #lockdown, for an exhibition titled ‘A Life in Lockdown’: Memories of Covid-19 in Gloucestershire 2020 for an exhibition at the museum, (hopefully in Autumn 2020) as well as a producing a permanent record of this period for their digital collection.
To contribute memories of the #Covid-19 pandemic in Gloucestershire, the public is being asked submit up to five image(s) and/or a video that they’ve taken during the lockdown period from 20 March 2020...
Gloucestershire Libraries
Your voice is unique and Gloucestershire Libraries would love to hear it! “A Life in Lockdown: In Your Words”, is an opportunity for writers of all ages and abilities to share experiences of Lockdown through personal stories, short fictional stories, comic strips, poems, Blogs, Vlogs, short creative films or animations.
- People reach out for poetry and storytelling in times of stress and high emotion and we’d like to capture your creative response to these strange times.
- For information about how to join in or read people’s submissions visit https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/libraries/life-in-lockdown-in-your-words/
- To send us your creations or for answers to queries about the project please email LibrariesLockdownProject@gloucestershire.gov.uk
Strike a Light
Strike a Light will be supporting community-led creative projects in Barton and Tredworth in the Autumn, to bring people together in a safe socially distanced way and are also working on a project with members of Gloucester's black communities to share and record their lockdown experience.
- For more information or to get involved: philippa @strikealightfestival.org.uk
The University Archive
The University Archive houses the institutional history dating from its earliest traces in 1834. Rarely have students, staff and our community witnessed / lived through such monumental societal changes. Your perspective and documentation of the lockdown matters, and we encourage the University community to consider donating records to our archive evidencing your experiences.
- Contact: archives @glos.ac.uk
Umbrella ‘A Life in Lockdown’ project
If you are already running your own Lockdown projects and would like to get involved in our umbrella ‘A Life in Lockdown’ project, please get in touch.
- Contact: kim.kenny2 @gloucestershire.gov.uk
Contact:
Heather Forbes (heather.forbes @gloucestershire.gov.uk)
Trustee of Gloucester History Festival and Gloucestershire County Archivist.