Amongst the tumbleweed of local lockdowns, fading furlough, too much twitter and the erratic Manchester weather, this summer for 5 Tuesdays I had something written in my diary. In pen! Confirmed. A plan, a job to do. The simplest job description in the world, to connect. A 45-minute phone call once a week with someone I’d never met before.
Sitting in my office bedroom, armed with questions to start conversations and ideas of how to get creative over the phone, week one was spent getting to know each other and what the world was looking like for each of us in these weird times.
I would have no problem chatting to a lamppost and one participant said they ‘could talk the hind legs off a donkey!’, another ‘I’m aiming to be eccentric’, and another ‘everyone’s got a story to tell’. So, after week one I was sure we wouldn’t run out of things to chat about. And we didn’t…
From supermarket stresses to sharing life lessons,
Family relationships to staying cool in 30 degree heat,
Careers in nursing to the power of song,
A KFC 9-piece bucket to what love really means,
Maps and their meanings to The Arctic Monkeys,
Reusable sanitary towels to ‘have we known each other long enough to swear yet?’
Book club thoughts to social care reform.
Conversations lead to creativity
These conversations made me laugh, cry and get angry. They reminded me of the absolute truth that we have far more in common than what divides us. We were 7 women with a phone call appointment in common and that was enough.
To celebrate the simplicity of picking up the phone and sharing your voice, and to preserve this chapter in our history here is a collection of moments to cram into our Covid-19 Conversation Capsule.
Podcast
First up in the capsule is a short podcast including the voices of Doreen, Lesley and Rachel.
Click here to listen to Alice's podcast
Elaine
One moment I am sad we weren’t able to capture from my conversations with Elaine was the call where she put on a backing track and sang for me. It was the most moving moment of the project for me and I had a little cry!
There is such vulnerability in singing for someone and it was an absolute privilege to hear Elaine’s fabulous voice. She explained she had only recently discovered her ‘gift of being able to absorb classical music’.
Here’s hoping Elaine can get safely singing with others again in the near future and here’s one of her favourite songs to keep in the Capsule – though I’m not sure which of the many versions is her fave!
Click here to listen to one of Elaine's favourite songs
Janice
Janice and I spent some time talking about how to keep busy during lockdown and what she had been up to. Here’s a poem I wrote using her own words.
“That’s mint. I’ll keep that forever cos that sums me up down to a tee” – Janice.
Click here to read Janice's poem
We also did a bit of drawing together where Janice described an image over the phone and I had to draw it.
Janet
Not all my conversations were about lockdown. Janet, a self-proclaimed adventurer, told me about how she likes jumping on a bus and seeing where she ends up. She is a Salford flag flyer and keen to let people know how much greener the city is than they might realise. After chatting about her recent interest in maps I suggested we made a map of Salford with hints and tips from her. I introduced her to a digital content website and she made this ace flyer instead – Life Begins at 60!
If you would like an audio version of this leaflet, please contact rachel@artwithheart.org.uk and she will provide one for you.
Click here to download Janet's leaflet
Doreen
Doreen, like all my participants said so many things that inspired me including describing being alive as ‘the climbing frame of life’. Below are a few snippets of wisdom and joy I want to remember.
Lesley
Lesley and I spent the first three weeks talking all things politics and pandemics, philosophy and art. We kept pontificating over what we could create. We even considered re writing an Arctic Monkeys song together. (Are you sad we didn’t do that?).
In the end we decided that what we wanted to capture was the overall tone of our chats: anxiety and powerlessness in a scary world but served with a huge dollop of hope on top of it all.
Lesley wrote an opinion piece inspired by a quote she had mentioned to me one day, ‘whenever you propose to do anything, you should stop and ask yourself: ‘If everyone did this, what would the world be like?’ alongside it she sent a trio of haikus on the same theme.
Click here to read Lesley's poem
Every Act Impacts
Lesley’s beautiful and timely opinion piece, Every Act Impacts was so brilliant we thought it deserved its own dedicated space. You can read the full piece here.
An extract from Lesley’s piece:
“I can’t remember when I first read Nicholas Monsarrat’s book ‘The Time Before This’. Probably as an adult. It had been one of those books that had been on the shelves in my childhood home… Re-reading it recently, it’s a quiet book, it broaches a huge subject with massive understatement, and, I have to admit, a bit of a cop-out ending. But one small passage stuck with me, and continued to resonate through the years.
It is when a very old decrepit, desperate man recognises the moral imperative that drives another’s actions towards him and says,
“That’s right, whenever you propose to do anything, you should stop and ask yourself: ‘If everyone did this, what would the world be like?’ You will soon discover the right answer”.
A Call for Change
The final thing I want to squeeze into the Covid-19 Conversation Capsule is inspired by 6 women’s words that clash and meet. I want to put it in last so it’s on the top of the pile because we’ll need to keep reaching in to have another look as we begin to move forward.
