In November 2020 at the start of the second lockdown our Education officer David Beech began to meet with students and their tutors to discuss collaborative projects relating to the experience of Covid-19 and the constraints imposed by the lockdown.

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The projects included The Pandemic Diaries and The Pandemic Home and it is the creative response from 12-year-olds to final-year degree students that forms the content of our exhibition. In the same way that the Mass Observation Diaries of World War 2 provided an invaluable record of life in this country, the exhibition illuminates the lives of (mostly) young people in times of shared adversity.

The diaries, dioramas, poems, photographs, posters, and ceramics reflected the makers’ thoughts, feelings and observations of this often distressing, period in their lives. Frustration, boredom, anxiety, and stress are common themes but there was also resilience, warmth, humour, insight, and the talent of almost 100 people who contributed to this exhibition.