Rainbows, Snakes, and Scarecrows - Creative Vernacular Interventions in Response to COVID-19 — A View from the United Kingdom(1st Edition)

The Covid-19 crisis saw the expression of numerous communal and individual responses to the impact of Coronavirus and the resulting lockdown across the U.K. which have been widely shared and often copied in both the physical and online worlds. Many of these activities quickly developed as forms of contemporary customs, myths and legend from the communal clapping on Thursday nights between late March and early May, to the displaying of rainbow drawings and teddy bears in front windows and scarecrows in front gardens. In addition, the numerous vernacular local customs and traditions that normally take place across the country have had to find new ways of existing and fulfilling their role under lockdown with many attempting to replicate their events online. Many of the new customs, activities and other creative responses to the crisis are expressions of belonging and community that exist at different levels from the personal and local to the national and global, in the face of an unprecedented threat to our global population and the resulting limits imposed on daily lives and freedoms. Utilizing this author’s extensive photographic documentation and material available online, this chapter will review and consider the wide range of COVID-related transitory and ephemeral material artifacts produced in both physical and virtual contexts to reveal the nature and context of individual and communal responses to the COVID crisis across the UK. What was the meaning and importance of these displays, customs, and rituals, and the material artifacts they produced? How did they develop and what did they mean for both those who created them and for their audience? What factors prompted their production during the thirteen weeks of the first UK lockdown in the spring of 2020? What do they reveal about the British experience of, and response to, the COVID crisis and the resulting restrictions on freedom? The aim is not to exhaustively capture all forms of creative response, but rather to identify, document, and study a range of key responses as case studies of the manner in which the population of the nation with the highest infection and death rate in Europe outside Russia sought and found personal and communal expression at this challenging time.