People are looking for ways to connect, communicate and be human. Through technology there is more connection, but it’s not the same, it’s not a real connection.
Ruby & Melody, May 2020
My little boy requires blood transfusions every 3 weeks, but getting in to the hospitals has become more complicated. You hear of a blood shortage going around so it’s been stretched to every 4 weeks. If you are stuck in the house with a child that has a disability or a condition, it makes everything much harder. My wife is pregnant and they’ve stopped her from going to the hospital with him because of the risk.
The lockdown situation is hard - If you’re out of a job, within a family it get’s hard, it takes a toll on you. I’m an oil and gas engineer and I’m a limited contractor so I’ve not been supported by any schemes. Generally I work on a plant that is south of Turkey, I would do 1 month there and 1 month off - so I need the aviation industry to be running in order for me to work at my plant. It’s making me re-think working in this industry because there’s a whole world push towards greener energy - which has made me want to go towards Solar. The last few months have made me think a lot.
Rashid, Yussef & Hiba, May 2020
Paul, August 2020
I think this time will leave a lasting effect on people, but I hope we can grow past it.
JC & Nina, May 2020
Trevor, June 2020
The Pineapple, May 2020
As older people we are thinking about our lives, we’ve got a lot of time, so you’re also reflecting on what you have and what you haven’t got, the people you’ve lost and the people you love. I recently wrote a poem called grandma’s lament because i’m really missing my grandchildren. I come from a pretty tactile and affectionate family - that’s what we love to do. I wrote about not being able to do that. I’ve just got to feel the love in my heart and it has to come out in words because there’s no other ways to express it.
Jehane Markham, May 2020.
We had a talk around the table the other night and one of the boys said, I feel like we know each other a lot better than we did before - Lou
I usually take part in lots of sports like football and tennis. I’ve been really missing that. It’s not the same if you can’t be with your friends whilst you’re doing it. Talking online is good, but it doesn’t have the same effect as seeing them in person. With all the restrictions and social distancing, it’s a lot harder to do that - Hector
There has been positive action in the community though. Someone set up a local appeal for hostels in Camden that were low on resources, so we’ve become one of the drop-off points for nappies, food and things like that. There’s also an email thread for anyone in the community that’s in need of help - Lou
Lou, Edward & Hector, May 2020
June 2020
August 2020
It’s a disaster for music, not good at all, so many venues are not going to exist. For musicians and crew it’s really bad. It’s going to take years to recover.
There’s always a feeling in these times that music should be free, but musicians are like everyone else and need to make a living. It can’t always be free, it has to be paid for somehow. Concerts and gigs are their ways of sustaining themselves.
I’ve been living round here since 1986, in this same place. It’s changed a lot, it was quite a working class area when I moved here, there’s a lot of the same people still living here but there’s also much richer people here than there was back then.
Chris, Musician and Sound Engineer, April 2020.
It’s a reflection of something we’ve all been saying for a while - the people who make the policies don’t reflect ordinary people at all. For instance the policy makers decided that universal credit would be paid monthly, similar to professionals, which drives a lot of people in to debt who need more regular supplements.
There’s a great uncertainty and there doesn’t seem be any channels to feed in to government effectively to say - ‘have you thought about these people?’. There are too many people falling through the cracks and there were too many falling through the cracks already. This is just exacerbating the existing high level of inequality we already had.
We saw protests before lockdown in France, Chile, Lebanon and a range of places against inequality and we know that there will be social unrest when there are higher levels of inequality. So what we’ve seen with the BLM protests in reaction to George Floyd is the match that struck the tinderbox - it’s just one aspect of people saying we’ve been living under extreme inequality, discrimination and institutional racism and we are not going to take it any more. There were people who criticised crowds gatherings but for a lot of people, especially those in America, they feel they’ve got nothing to lose. When you feel like you’ve got nothing to lose, the one thing you have left is your voice.
Wanda, June 2020.
