12th June 2020

Creating an archive of our experience of COVID-19

COVID-19 has changed the world - and York was the first city in the country with confirmed coronavirus cases. We have lived alongside the disease for several months. By collecting your records, we can create a lasting collective memory of York’s coronavirus outbreak. This will be an important resource for researchers in the years to come. 

Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York holds documents on 800 years of York’s history. It now wants to create a new archive of York’s experiences of the 2020 pandemic, by collecting your records. These could be diary entries, poetry or prose, photographs, short films or sound recordings. It can accept digital records. Unfortunately, it can’t take artworks or objects.

However, if you are running a community project around artwork, do get in touch with them, as it may be possible to record your activities in other ways.

Staff would like to hear from as many people as possible: young and old, female and male, health workers, carers, teachers, social workers, business owners, retail workers, school students, retirees – and others.

No hard copy records should be sent until a later date, as Borthwick staff are currently working from home. They are happy to receive digital records now and can accept formats listed in the link below.  If anyone would like to submit a digital record, please email covid19archive@york.ac.uk and access will be arranged to the University’s online file Drop-Off system. 

The Borthwick cannot accept links to YouTube videos, but would require the original files to be sent. 

There’s further guidance for potential depositors available here, but if you have any questions, or would like to find out more about the project, please contact Borthwick project staff at covid19archive@york.ac.uk

We're delighted to say that one of our local families, the Kays of Millfield Road, who've been entertaining us in lockdown with their videos - the #coronachins - are being featured in the British Film Institute lockdown blog, with a view to being included in the BFI archive. Congratulations to all!