Lockdown wasn’t all bad. Sometimes, when you’re faced with restrictions, you wind up doing more meaningful things with less resources. So, when museums and libraries began closing their doors to the public, the world migrated online, and my commute into central London became a thing of the past, I suddenly had an abundance of extra time on my hands. Unable to stray too far from where I lived because of lockdown, I looked for things that would stimulate my academic interests locally. I’d always been interested in the various methods archivists have used to collect and curate their collections so, when I began noticing an influx of pandemic-related street messages in shopfronts and residential buildings in my hometown, Brighton, I whipped out my phone and started taking photos.
photo credit Paula Bingley 2 – featured on Word on the Street Archive
Cycling around on my bike, it felt like everyone was experiencing a range of emotions that were either brought on or exacerbated by the events of 2020. It was all reflected in the built environment around me – all I had to do was look. Some people came together in an outpouring of praise for the NHS; kids chalked pavements with spontaneous messages thanking key workers, and elderly people proudly adorned their windows with touching knitted rainbows. Some, believing the virus was a hoax, scrawled conspiratorial messages about the so-called ‘plandemic’ on the seats of public transport. Others expressed their outrage at the murder of George Floyd in the US by making protest placards proclaiming that the UK was not, as some had complacently believed, innocent. Others vented their anger at the government’s mishandling of the pandemic and took to the streets to graffiti public spaces (‘#borishasfailed’ was a particularly memorable tag). Some who had become more environmentally aware during lockdown painted colourful murals – rejoicing at the sudden ‘Anthropause’ when wildlife began to reclaim urban spaces back from noisy, car-driving humans who had suddenly retreated indoors. Later, when retailers and pubs owners were allowed to reopen, they scrambled to create social-distancing signs, hoping that the asymptomatic bodies floating around their premises abided by the rules.
London, credit @inkbaby1980 – image featured on Word on the Street Archive
But what would happen to all these fleeting signs and messages when the public inevitably decided to take them down? Or worse: censor and throw them away? Who, I wondered, was documenting it all for posterity? Collaborating remotely with two other course mates (and many Zoom calls, late nights, and coffees later!), WORD ON THE STREET (www.wordonthestreetcollection.uk) was born. As the UK’s first mapped archive of crowd-sourced photography captured in the wake of the pandemic, WORD ON THE STREET will be a rich resource for future researchers hoping to get a glimpse of what life was like during a year of unprecedented social and economic upheaval. In addition to a gallery of archive highlights, the free-to-use website also has an interactive map (which took almost four very tiring but rewarding days of my life to programme…) that allows visitors to compare and contrast photos from across the UK in real-time. The aim is to preserve otherwise fleeting expressions of community and protest. And, with the generous (and often extremely heart-warming) help of the public, the collection of photography gathered there continues to grow daily.
Brighton, credit @willshakesbeer – image featured on Word on the Street Archive
I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons since starting the project. I’ve learned that when you engage in rapid-response archiving processes, you’re forced to think about what you collect (and what you inevitably leave out). You learn and make mistakes about how to contextualise and present different types of material culture across multiple digital platforms as faithfully and as objectively as possible. You learn how important the little scraps that make up a social history are, and how easily they can be lost irrevocably.
The biggest lesson of all though – one that I will treasure forever – is the importance of human connections, even if they are only ‘virtual’. Without being able to meet people physically, the archive has allowed me to connect, laugh (and often cry) about the crazy times we’re living through. Collecting the good, the bad, and the downright ugly this year, it’s clear that we’ve become a nation galvanised into expression, and I’m pleased to have preserved a small part of it for posterity.
Norwich, credit @knapple – image featured on Word of the Street Archive.