Lockdown Cultures

Lockdown Cultures is both a cultural response to our extraordinary times and a manifesto for the arts and humanities and their role in our post-pandemic society. This book offers a unique response to the question of how the humanities commented on and were impacted by one of the dominant crises of our times: the Covid-19 pandemic. While the role of engineers, epidemiologists and, of course, medics is assumed, Lockdown Cultures illustrates some of the ways in which the humanities understood and analysed 2020–21, the year of lockdown and plague. Though the impulse behind the book was topical, underpinning the richly varied and individual essays is a lasting concern with the value of the humanities in the twenty-first century. Each contributor approaches this differently but there are two dominant strands: how art and culture can help us understand the Covid crisis; and how the value of the humanities can be demonstrated by engaging with cultural products from the past. The result is a book that serves as testament to the humanities’ reinvigorated and reforged sense of identity, from the perspective of UCL and one of the leading arts and humanities faculties in the world. It bears witness to a globally impactful event while showcasing interdisciplinary thinking and examining how the pandemic has changed how we read, watch, write and educate. More than thirty individual contributions collectively reassert the importance of the arts and humanities for contemporary society.

How the pandemic has changed and reinvigorated the arts and humanities. Lockdown Cultures is both a cultural response to our extraordinary times and a manifesto for the arts and humanities and their role in our post-pandemic society. This book offers a unique response to the question of how the humanities have responded to the dominant crisis of our times: the Covid-19 pandemic. While the roles of engineers, epidemiologists, and, of course, medics are assumed, this volume illustrates some of how the humanities understood and analyzed 2020-21, the year of lockdown and plague. Though the impulse behind the book was topical, underpinning the richly varied and individual essays is a lasting concern with the value of the humanities in the twenty-first century. Each contributor approaches this differently but there are two dominant strands: how art and culture can help us understand the Covid crisis; and how the value of the humanities can be demonstrated by engaging with cultural products from the past. The result is a book that serves as a testament to the humanities' reinvigorated and reforged sense of identity. It bears witness to a globally impactful event while showcasing interdisciplinary thinking and examining how the pandemic has changed how we read, watch, write and educate. More than thirty individual contributions collectively reassert the importance of the arts and humanities for contemporary society.

How does one record an extraordinary time? Confined to his Delhi apartment, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee unravels the intimate paradoxes of life he encounters in the first weeks of a global pandemic. His stories about local fish sellers, gardeners, barbers and lovers merge with his concerns for the exodus of migrant labourers, the challenges faced by health workers, and a mother braving checkposts to bring her son home. Drawing inspiration from contemporary literature and cinema, The Town Slowly Empties is a unique window on a world desperate for love, care and hope. Manash is our Everyman, urging us to slow down and mend our broken ties with nature. Written with rare candour and elegance, this meditative book is a compelling account of the human condition that soars high above the empty streets.

The Dictionary of Coronavirus Culture presents an A-Z of life in lockdown. Taking everyday terms that capture the lived experience of lockdown — like chocolate, streaming, ageing, health, clapping, social distancing, dystopia, and frontline workers — and discussing them with a range of writers, theorists, and academics, it provides unusually accessible and friendly analysis of our shared historic moment. With contributions from Lynne Segal, Jo Grady, Kate Soper, Stefano Harney, and many more, The Dictionary of Coronavirus Culture is designed to help us come to terms with what COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns mean for us, and the world around us.

Introduction to Nordic Cultures is an innovative, interdisciplinary introduction to Nordic history, cultures and societies from medieval times to today. The textbook spans the whole Nordic region, covering historical periods from the Viking Age to modern society, and engages with a range of subjects: from runic inscriptions on iron rings and stone monuments, via eighteenth-century scientists, Ibsen’s dramas and turn-of-the-century travel, to twentieth-century health films and the welfare state, nature ideology, Greenlandic literature, Nordic Noir, migration, ‘new’ Scandinavians, and stereotypes of the Nordic. The chapters provide fundamental knowledge and insights into the history and structures of Nordic societies, while constructing critical analyses around specific case studies that help build an informed picture of how societies grow and of the interplay between history, politics, culture, geography and people. Introduction to Nordic Cultures is a tool for understanding issues related to the Nordic region as a whole, offering the reader engaging and stimulating ways of discovering a variety of cultural expressions, historical developments and local preoccupations. The textbook is a valuable resource for undergraduate students of Scandinavian and Nordic studies, as well as students of European history, culture, literature and linguistics.

Staff in schools have never been under so much pressure with high stakes accountability leading many teachers to rethink their profession. A third of Early Career Teachers are leaving within 5 years of training while Headteachers are less sure than ever that they will be able to continue to lead their schools. We have a staff wellbeing and mental health crisis in education. The schools in Cultures of Staff Wellbeing and Mental Health have addressed this crisis by implementing a whole-school culture of staff wellbeing and mental health. It has taken courage, determination and authenticity to prioritise relationships over results, not only between the children and their teachers, but also between the staff themselves. This book will support your school with: •32 individual chapter case-study accounts by headteachers and mental wellbeing leads of how they are implementing staff and pupil wellbeing in their schools. A rich resource of strategies and ideas to adapt to your own context. •How to recognise and tackle staff burnout in your school, identifying the Maslach factors that cause it. •Why teachers putting ‘a brave face on it’ is ineffective: Jonathan Glazzard presents his ground- breaking research identifying a connection between teacher wellbeing, pupil emotional response and attainment. •What ‘buffer’ leadership is and why recognising it is crucial to the headteacher’s mental health. This book belongs to the staff of the case-study schools that recount, in their own words, how focusing on wellbeing and mental health has transformed their schools. "This book exemplifies good practice and will hopefully inspire others to follow its case study leads." David Gumbrell, Founder of The Resilience Project "This book is an outstanding reference guide for all school leaders who wish to implement a culture of wellbeing based on evidence and success. A must read!" Suneta Bagri (FCCT), Former Head teacher, Founder of The Every Teacher Matters Project & Cultivate Coaching & Consultancy "The editor not only encourages the reader to engage & empower all staff to see and own their own wellbeing, but also for leaders to model self-care & the promotion of sustainable wellbeing behaviour." Patrick Ottley-O’Connor, Executive Headteacher "A must read for any school wanting to strengthen the wellbeing of their school community." Daniela Falecki, Founder and Director Teacher Wellbeing Pty Ltd, Sydney Australia Steve Waters is the founder and director of the Teach Well Alliance. He has thirty years' experience as a secondary school English teacher. During this time he fulfilled many roles including middle leader and Assistant Headteacher. His previous books include Doing Your Research Project which is in its seventh edition.

Already dealing with disruptive market forces, the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) faced fundamental challenges resulting from the global health crisis, wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. With catastrophic changes to cultural consumption, cultural organizations are dealing with short-, medium-, and long-term threats to livelihoods under lockdown. This book aims at filling the literature gap about the consequences of one of the hardest crises – COVID-19 – severely impacting all the fields of the CCIs. With a focus on European countries and taking into account the evolving and unstable context caused by the pandemic still in progress, this book investigates the first reactions and actual strategies of CCIs’ actors, government bodies, and cultural institutions facing the COVID-19 crisis and the potential consequences of these emergency strategies for the future of the CCIs. Solutions adopted during the repeated lockdowns by CCIs’ actors could originate new forms of cultural consumption and/or new innovative market strategies. This book brings together a constellation of contributors to analyze the cultural sector as it seeks to emerge from this existential challenge. The global perspectives presented in this book provide research-based evidence to understand and reflect on an unprecedented period, allowing reflective practitioners to learn and develop from a range of real-world cases. The book will also be of interest to researchers, academics, and students with a particular interest in the management of cultural and creative organizations and crisis management.

This book explores the impact of Covid-19, and the associated state lockdown, on rural lives in a former homeland in South Africa. The 2020 Disaster Management Act saw the state sweep through rural areas, targeting funerals and other customary practices as potential ‘super-spreader’ events. This unprecedented clampdown produced widespread disruption, fear and anxiety. The authors build on path-breaking work concerning local responses to West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, and examine the HIV/AIDS pandemic, to understand the impact of the Covid crisis on these communities, and on rural Africa more broadly. To shed light on the role of custom and ritual in rural social change during the pandemic, Covid and Custom in Rural South Africa applies long-term historical and ethnographic research; theories of people’s science, local knowledge and the human economy; and fieldwork conducted in ten rural South African communities during lockdown. The volume highlights differences between developments in Southern Africa and elsewhere on the continent, while exploring how the former apartheid homelands–commonly, yet problematically, represented as former ‘labour reserves’–have since been reconstituted as new home-spaces. In short, it explains why rural people have been so angered by the state’s assault on their cultural practices and institutions in the time of Covid.