Project Details
Description
This project will work with ‘Covid Families for Justice UK’ in the digital preservation of the National Covid Memorial Wall, London. This is an unofficial memorial established by bereaved campaigners as a tribute to UK pandemic victims. Throughout 2021, 150,000 red hearts were painted onto a wall beside St. Thomas’ hospital, each one bearing the name of a victim. Members of ‘Covid Families for Justice UK’ recently petitioned the government to support the wall becoming a permanent memorial. This petition was rejected. Now the hearts are at risk of being removed by authorities or being weathered away. The wall has been digitally reproduced online: https://nationalcovidmemorialwall.org/. However, individual hearts are not captured. This project aims to produce an archive of approximately 1000 photographs, so that the wall can be reconstructed in such a resolution that would allow the viewer to inspect the details of the hearts.
This project will ensure the digital preservation of a culturally (and politically) significant memorial for people today and in the future. The importance of such an endeavour has been demonstrated in much heritage literature, including my monograph “Ritual Litter” Redressed (2022). Many of the spontaneous memorials that appeared following terror attacks have been archived physically and/or digitally by local heritage organisations, with 9/11 provoking debate around whether these memorials should be preserved, how, and by whom. Following the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, the University of Manchester worked with Manchester Art Gallery to gather the memorial items and, with a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, were able to digitize more than 10,000 of them. By making these archives available for bereaved families, they have been shown to aid the grieving process (cf. Arvanitis, 2019).
A future step would be to use the photographic archive to produce a travelling exhibition of the wall in collaboration with ‘Covid Families for Justice UK’. It would also be valuable to arrange audio or video testimonies from people who have dedicated a heart to a loved
one, as a way of capturing individual stories and voices for posterity, and very personally communicating the importance of the wall to individuals.
This project will ensure the digital preservation of a culturally (and politically) significant memorial for people today and in the future. The importance of such an endeavour has been demonstrated in much heritage literature, including my monograph “Ritual Litter” Redressed (2022). Many of the spontaneous memorials that appeared following terror attacks have been archived physically and/or digitally by local heritage organisations, with 9/11 provoking debate around whether these memorials should be preserved, how, and by whom. Following the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, the University of Manchester worked with Manchester Art Gallery to gather the memorial items and, with a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, were able to digitize more than 10,000 of them. By making these archives available for bereaved families, they have been shown to aid the grieving process (cf. Arvanitis, 2019).
A future step would be to use the photographic archive to produce a travelling exhibition of the wall in collaboration with ‘Covid Families for Justice UK’. It would also be valuable to arrange audio or video testimonies from people who have dedicated a heart to a loved
one, as a way of capturing individual stories and voices for posterity, and very personally communicating the importance of the wall to individuals.
| Short title | AHRC IAA |
|---|---|
| Status | Finished |
| Effective start/end date | 27/07/22 → 26/07/23 |
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