Health Connections launched a successful community project during the first lockdown period in 2020 and another during Lockdown 2.0 in 2021.
What is it?
The Invisible Occupation was run as an exhibition in Health Connections shops detailing all the community’s experiences during island-wide lockdowns and self-isolation periods. Thoughts and feelings were jotted down in journals and online diaries and took on various shapes chosen by individuals – notebooks, coloured paper pages, digital artwork, written content. The lockdown journal included words, pictures, drawings, photos, collages, cuttings from newspapers or magazines describing how everyone was coping during lockdown and how they felt about social distancing.
Health Connections works with people who live in isolation all the time. Perhaps because of frailty, disability, poverty or long term chronic conditions including physical or mental health issues….there can be a myriad of reasons. Nowadays, the whole community is learning about how this must feel and better understanding the loneliness and challenges that come with being in isolation. We feel that capturing the thoughts and feelings that people have in lockdown serve to remind us all what it is like for those who will continue to live in isolation long after we all return to a busier pace of life.
This project also helped people find opportunities in the current circumstances that allow them to look afresh at what matters to them, making the most of a pause in the usual hectic race to adapt and recalibrate. Perhaps also to look for support beyond those times should they need it, enabling them to live healthier, happier more fulfilling lives in the long term, which is the core mission of Health Connections.
This project had a considerable impact/value both historically and socially and ultimately helped encourage a more compassionate community for those who live with long term isolation.
For more information and to read the press release, please visit our website – https://healthconnections.gg/
Have a journal to submit?
If you are currently self-isolating and are looking for things to keep you busy – stick, scribble, paint, write and draw some of that good stuff – and some of the not so good stuff – in your journal so we can look back on this time and be amazed at everything that happened and how we got through it together. Be as artistic as you want or just use words all the time, either will be brilliant.
Send your material to kate@healthconnections.gg, Facebook and tag Health Connections, or Instagram @healthconnectguernseyshop. Should there be another island-wide lockdown, Health Connections will compile new ‘lockdown’ material from our community for another exhibition.
