Digital responses to Covid from arts, culture & heritage sector

VR headset by Stella Jacob

Recently I asked on Twitter for examples of digital responses to Covid across the arts, culture, heritage and museums sector. Many people were kind enough to respond and I have put together this list so they’re all in one place. To be clear this is a list of projects people shared with me, I’ve very aware it’s only the tip of the iceberg, although it does include a range of different types of events and workshops, from performances, to escape rooms, learning sessions and meditation. I’ve added a few other examples of projects I already knew about.

If you have a project you’d like added to this list please let me know via Twitter.

The List

• Something a bit different from the Gardner Museum — a guided meditation for those needing to slow down for a while.
• ENO Breathe, for those recovering from Covid.
• The Jewish Museum in London has many online events and activities, including Virtual Tours and Virtual Classroom for schools. They also published a lockdown impact report which contains more information on what they did, why and the impact.
• The Roald Dahl Museum shared a number of creative activities that families can do at home.
• There was lots of love for the Whitworth’s at home children’s workshops.
• The Brunel Museum has created an online virtual escape room, Tunneling Through Time.
• HOME in Manchester commissioned many online events, of a variety of types, under their Homemakers series.
• The Alutiiq musem ran a series of online craft workshops.
• Psappha have been running a number of livestreamed performances.
• Design in Quarantine is an initiative that aims to “…collect works which are integral to representing the evolution of design responses to the coronavirus pandemic”.
• The Museum of Portable Sound has been running live virtual tours.
• The Akron Art Museum ran Lunchtime 5 sessions, encouraging people to take 5 minutes out of their Friday lunchtime to learn something new.
• Have Your Passport Ready is a choose your own adventure play that received 4 stars from The Guardian.
• Charles Court Opera has been running a number of online events and workshops, updating with new events on a weekly basis.
• Storyhouse in Chester is facilitating weekly online shared reading groups.
• Create Live from Create Arts, a series of wellbeing and creativity workshops for range different groups.
• GIFT ran their 2020 festival online and the end of April/early May this year is running a series of “conversations, sharings and workshops”.
• Northern Opera created a film, Cinderella, in December that featured professional singers filming on location with a community cast recording their parts from home. It won ‘Best Opera’ at the Classical Music Digital Awards.
• During the first lockdown Yard Theatre created a number of digital specific events and performances and their latest initiative, Yardshare aims to support arts professionals with a series of online conversations.
• Royal Court Theatre created Living Newspapers.
• Darkfield created an at home audio experience, Double, about which The Stage said, “…what resonates most profoundly is how much the Darkfield Radio experiment allows something vaguely approaching a traditional performance space to be built, if only in the imagination. For a brief time it’s like being back in the theatre”.
• The Royal Academy gave people some light relief.
• Birmingham Museums became the first museum to partner with Occupy White Walls and they continue to run a range of different types of online events. Read more about their approach to digital here.
• English National Ballet launched an on demand platform.
• Museum of London virtual video games tour.
• Revolution Arts in Luton ran a huge number of online events during Covid, of all different types.
• Brent2020 produced a series of online films, ‘Brent Locked In’ showcasing interviews with musicians, artists, athletes and activists— all inspired by the Covid crisis.
• From a professional development point of view, Up Front is a series of online talks aimed at women working in the arts. Run by ARCADE the talks aim to “… support, inspire and embolden”.