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.

Growing Connection: The story of the Roots Programme

In this blog, we introduce three members of The Roots Programme team. The Roots Programme run programmes that bridge gaps, transcend social bubbles, and create lasting relationships across key facets of society. By building community through cultural exchange...

The magic of finding my peers of relationship-centred practitioners

In brief On the 23rd November 2022, 80 relationship-centred practitioners came together at Northumbria University to unpack the how, what and why of relationship-centred practice. We shared some of our key takeaways in this letter and, here, Fabian Pfortmüller...

Whose relationships?

In brief The stories and ideas we consume shape our views, belief systems and our sense of what is possible. In this blog, Iona Lawrence offers some personal reflections on the shortcomings of her bookshelf and asks who else she should be reading and what needs to...

Active Neighbours – Wendy

“[It’s] the feel good factor of helping people – it’s that thought: ‘oh I’ve just done something good today for people.’ And it’s just seeing people smile […] sort of grateful because you’ve helped them in some way.”

Kate – Spirit of Lockdown #6

As part of our open call to Share your Story, we received this #SpiritOfLockdown account from Kate*. Lockdown offered a Kate the opportunity to take a step back, reassess her life and reflect on the relationships that really matter to her.Setting the Scene: Life...

Relational Councils: Learning from crisis

Mutual aid was driven from the ground up but flourished with appropriate support from local councils. The UK response to refugees arriving from Ukraine was led from the top down but could only succeed with local engagement. What can we learn from this approach to the...

A common field

In brief In this first post in the Joining the Dots series, Relationships Project founder David Robinson sets the scene for the series and outlines the plan going forward. The hook worm was paralysing entire towns in the rural south of the United States in the...

Fostering an ecology of perspectives

We’re featuring a mini blog series, where in each piece, an Enrol Yourself Host reflects on their practice of building strong relationships, as a facilitator. In this blog, James Kite reflects on what we can learn from neurophysiology and companion planting when it comes to peer learning.

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.

Observatory Sighting #1: Stories, language and framing

In this first Sighting, we reflect on the role that stories, language and framing will play as we decide, as a society, how to rebuild. Observation The stories we tell now about how society is responding to COVID-19 will shape how we look back on this time and...

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.