What’s your Spirit of Lockdown?

Share your story to inspire a better, more connected future

The stories we tell now about our response to Covid-19 will shape how we look back on this time, and how we move forward as a society.

What are the truths that will inspire our better days?
What’s the spirit you want to bottle to guide your way forward?

Share your story of lockdown and join a community of story sharers across the country in celebrating the power of relationships and inspiring a conversation about how we can build back better, stronger and more connected.

Share a written story

Share a multimedia story

Explore others’ stories

Whether you’re looking for inspiration to write your own story or simply to understand people’s experiences during the lockdown, dive into our latest submissions.

Relationships in the workplace

In brief In this Joining the Dots blog, Rufus Olins reflects on the importance of data in making the case for a more relationship-centred approach in business settings. Rufus was Chief Membership Officer at the Co-Op Group and is now Executive...

Loving the Stranger in the Time of Coronavirus: The Story of HostNation

In brief In this Joining the Dots blog, Anthony Berman gives a personal account of the befriending charity, HostNation, before and after COVID-19, and the benefits it has brought to refugees and asylum seekers and their befrienders.Anthony is on the Management team at...

Two years of bringing people together

In brief Back in July 2021, we shared our proposal to the National Lottery Community Fund’s Bringing People Together Fund. In July 2022, we shared what we got up to in the first of our two years of funding - from recruiting the Relationships Collective to bringing...

Observatory Sighting 13: Feeling for the future

In this first Sighting of the New Year, we are stepping back and reflecting on the emotional drivers – the feelings as well as the practical experiences that will shape the future.

Active Neighbours – Alan

“I think it’s an interesting one actually for people of my age – single men. At my age – there’s a question of ‘what are you allowed to join?’ that will be positively received? […] There’s a sort of suspicion. But the Covid thing – I think what I really liked about it was the sense that anyone could join and we couldn’t see what each other looked like – we didn’t know how old we were. We didn’t know what social background we were from, we weren’t even talking to one another – because it was all text-based. And so in that sense it was a great leveler, I thought.”

The Post Office Scandal: Putting Relationships Last

Mostly on the Relationships Project blog we talk about the value and importance of putting relationships first. The Post Office Horizon scandal, dominating the news in recent days, has made us think about the grim consequences of doing the opposite - putting...

Carnegie Trust UK – Heatmap in Action

In our work on kindness and flourishing towns, we’ve thought a lot about how we create the conditions for relationships in communities. We were interested to use the Heatmap to see how it works and what we could learn about our relationships with a much broader network of people and organisations.

#SolidaritySpaces

Working in relational ways is joyful, empowering, revolutionary. In putting relationships first we unlock our shared humanity, we bring love into unloving spaces, and we acheive things we couldn't otherwise achieve. But working in relational ways can also be tough,...

A Relationships Field?

In brief In this blog, Iona Lawrence and Immy Robinson ask whether taking a field-building approach could be valuable to the ‘field of relationships’ and ask for your ideas and partnership as we set out on this inquiry. If you're someone who puts relationships at the...

Politics as usual or a new beginning?

In brief In this Joining the Dots blog (written back in the days when parliaments sat and terms were predictable), Iona Lawrence and David Robinson consider the place of relationships in our national politics. Iona works for The Cares Family and previously...

Everyone is welcome

You don’t need to be an experienced storyteller to take part. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar or being the next JK Rowling – we want to hear about your experience of lockdown in your voice and in whichever format works best for you.

You might want to write your story, to video it, audio record it, draw it, tell it alone, tell it in pairs. Choose the format that works best for you and get sharing!

share a written story

share a multimedia story

Populating the map

We’re building an interactive map to showcase and celebrate stories of lockdown from across the UK. In early 2021 we’ll be inviting storytellers and local decision makers to come together to draw out lessons and shape a better, more connected society post-Covid.

You are under no obligation whatsoever to consent to your story being shared publicly – it’s entirely up to you to decide whether you’d like to share it or keep it private. Whichever format you decide to share your story – written or multimedia – please take a moment to let us know whether you’re happy for your story to be shared.