Women’s experiences of lockdown the focus of House of Commons launch

‘Lockdown House’ is a virtual exhibition that enables visitors to wander through digitalised rooms and gardens, accessing the experiences of women whose lives were transformed through the pandemic.

It’s part of a multi-disciplinary Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) initiative, ‘A [Socially Isolated] Room of One’s Own: Women Writing Lockdown’, which captures the thoughts and feelings of women and tells their story through various different outputs.

The project is led in partnership between Robert Gordon University (RGU), University of Lincoln, and University of Leicester. RGU’s Professor Sarah Pedersen of the School of Creative and Cultural Business is co-investigator. She said: “The experience of lockdown posed a series of unique challenges for women in the UK, and it is vitally important that these are recorded and reflected upon in order to inform future responses to emergencies.

“The aim of our project is to document this unique period in recent history by capturing the stories and experiences of women through their life writing.”

Within ‘Lockdown House’, women writers explore a variety of issues faced by those in lockdown, from home-schooling and working from home to relationships and domestic violence. Their writing is displayed alongside images, film, and social media content which each tell their own individual story from a range of authors, bloggers, poets and journalists.

When the outbreak was confirmed as a pandemic in 2020 and lockdown was introduced by the UK Government, statistics showed that women were disproportionately affected by the competing demands of work, childcare and home-schooling, which impacted their creative abilities.

Lucie Armitt, Professor in Contemporary English Literature at the University of Lincoln, added: “With the COVID-19 Inquiry underway, the specific impact of lockdown on UK women remains insufficiently explored.

“Our project captures the thoughts and experiences of women writers and women who would not self-identify as writers, driven by lockdown to write diaries, social media posts, poetry, and fiction about lockdown. In its entirety the project captures, for posterity, a moment in women’s history that might otherwise disappear.”

The event will be held in the Churchill Room on Wednesday 28 June and is hosted by Giles Watling MP, Chair of the All Party Writers Group at the House of Commons. Baroness Merron, member of the House of Lords, will also speak.

Following a tour of the virtual house, an introduction to the project will be made by Professor Lucie Armitt, University of Lincoln, and her Co-Investigators Professor Sarah Pedersen and Professor Krista Cowman, University of Leicester. The event will also include poetry produced by women at workshops run by poet Liv Torc, also featuring in the exhibition.

Image shows Professor Sarah Pedersen.