A national Day of Reflection on the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons from past memorialisation initiatives and attitudes in the present

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The proposed project will focus on the evolution of public memorialisation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Partnering with the Marie Curie charity and its campaign for a national Day of Reflection in 2021, it will draw academic expertise on civic memorialisation together with stakeholder organisations (charities, faith groups, and public bodies) to examine two core issues. First, how new practices may be beneficially informed by scholarship on British public memorialisation of traumas in the 20th century. Second, how varied stakeholder opinions on the format, organisation, and narratives of a national Day of Reflection on COVID-19 can be critically integrated into the development of the memorialisation activities. In this way the project will look to both past precedents and the complexities of the present, building up an analytical framework that impactfully contributes to social responses to the pandemic. In undertaking this work the project will consider how memorialisation navigates several key relationships: between 'top down' state-led memorialisation and local agency; between memorialisation as a force for unity and the need to reflect social diversity; between mourning loss and celebrating achievements during the crisis; between varied forms of memorial ritual; between national self-validation and self-critical reflection. Outputs from the project will include a series of workshops that draw together memory studies scholars and non-HEI participants, an open-access written report for Marie Curie and other stakeholders that informs preparations for the national Day of Reflection, and a major conference paper and follow-up publication.