'If Covid comes back, I want to go to space': a creative response to lockdown 

A series of artworks created by young people during the pandemic expresses what they found uniquely challenging about being in lockdown

Pictured (L-R) at the launch of the Little Houses Exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks are Johanna Visser from Stoneybatter Youth Service, and Jasmine Stott Lee, one of the young artists featured.

They talked about missing swimming, about liking to look out their window at the birds, about how reading Harry Potter books helped. One girl felt lucky to have her cats, Fluffy and Fluffball, for company. A boy said he was ‘lying in bed dreaming about myself playing football’.

These are some of the experiences and feelings recounted by young people to accompany artworks they created while living in isolation from their peers during lockdown. An exhibition of the artworks has just opened at the National Museum of Ireland.

The Little Houses exhibition is a collaborative partnership between Stoneybatter Youth Service and the National Museum. It originated in March 2020, at the outset of lockdown one, when Helen Beaumont – education officer at National Museum - started looking to connect with the local community at this very unique time.

“One of the youth workers got in touch – the youth service was in a challenging position. Until then all their engagement with young people had been face-to-face. Suddenly they had to move to online platforms.” 

With the museum already starting to collect materials that would tell the story of the pandemic, Beaumont was interested in capturing young people’s experience in the ‘right now’ of that first lockdown. Inspired by a similar project in The Netherlands, young people were invited to create artworks depicting spaces/places that were meaningful to them during this extraordinary time. Each participant was given a bag of art materials and a wooden board.

Billy McCrea, a youth worker with Stoneybatter Youth Service, says for him the journey of being involved with Little Houses began in the middle of the pandemic when he and others dropped off the materials to peoples’ homes. “It felt as though we were reaching out to them but without really knowing how they were coping. I do remember that most were happy to see a friendly face on the doorstep.”

To inspire their work, participants were asked to consider a number of questions: What do I miss? What are my dreams? What are the positive things that have happened during lockdown? They were encouraged to ‘have a proper look in your room’ and asked: What do you see?

The exhibition features 50 artworks, 40 of them from young people aged between five and 15 years. Their art explores the theme of ‘home’ and the spaces where young people lived during lockdown. “When the little rooms began to filter back, I felt very emotional,” says McCrea, who was struck by the range of emotions and feelings young people were experiencing in their homes.  “Some people felt fragile, some felt sheltered. Hopefully, most felt that home was somewhere they experienced a sense of belonging.” 

Beaumont says each artwork expresses something about the strange, challenging and hopefully unique time of being in lockdown. “One girl who likes to use weights depicts them with cobwebs to show she’d given up exercise and wasn’t looking after herself. A boy represented hobbies he was missing with a skateboard, basketball hoops – and, in the background, planet earth wearing a face mask, saying something about this being a global pandemic.” 

Windows feature a lot – an open window with tumbleweed blowing by, illustrating the strange quietness of the first lockdown; a window looking out on nature and a dog in a basket, with the accompanying comment ‘I think it’d be good to have a dog during lockdown’.

The young people embraced the opportunity to express their feelings through art. One girl wrote about feeling ‘isolated, scared, lost, alone, depressed and without a clear sight for my future. Losing myself and a year of my youth...only seeing what’s from my window and 5km. Forgetting the smiles of people and only seeing only their worried eyes. Missing the warm hugs and friendly handshakes and forgetting the smell of fresh air through a 3-layer surgical mask... I want all this to be over, to come back to our normal lives, without having to book an appointment to Penneys and doing church Mass online. I feel like I’m not in control of my own life’.

Others found an escape through art. One, writing about her ‘spacey looking wall’, explained her artwork: ‘This is Zoe the cat, Peep the dog, Gloo the fish and I am asleep in the bed. We decided to go to space so that we could stay away from Covid. We made a lovely new home there. I love space. If Covid comes back I want to go to space to live and bring my family with me.’ Another wrote about her life in lockdown being quite boring. Her artwork depicted how ‘it would be good to be a dog in a nice home during Covid times. You could go for walks in your 5k and stare out the window at Stoneybatter without a care in the world’.

“The range of themes is rich and varied, from very moving stories of loss and loneliness to the hilarious and joyful,” says Beaumont, who sees the project reflecting back to us the breadth of feelings and responses the whole population has had during this time.

The hope is that the exhibition – which Beaumont says is an important record of the pandemic – will help families/children visiting the museum to open up their own conversations about their experiences and feelings during lockdown.

• Little Houses exhibition runs at National Museum of Ireland, Decorative Arts & History for six months. Access free, booking required. Visit exhibition online at www.museum.ie/littlehouses/. The exhibition features a short film made by local filmmaker Luke McManus which gives voice to some of the young artists’ thoughts/ideas behind their artworks.