What we mean by "Creativity":
We define creativity expansively. It includes not only visual art, music, creative writing, dance, and sculpture, but also everyday activities that have become meaningful to you during the pandemic. If what springs to mind involves adopting to or creating something new during COVID-19 and speaks to your pandemic experience in a meaningful way, it counts.
If your impulse is to ask us whether your type of creativity matters, or counts, the answer is probably yes!
Here are some examples:
- painting • pottery • sculpture • protest art • poetry • fiction • comics • journaling • digital art • photography • cooking • TikTok performances • coloring • building • gaming • gardening • making music • dancing • group projects • other everyday activities that have become meaningful during the pandemic.
This list is far from exhaustive.
Even a “creative outlet” may not capture the moments of creativity during COVID-19 for you. You may have found meaning in something you were required to do at school, at work, or for an organization that offers the best window into your experience of the pandemic. That’s what we care about. So don’t let yourself get caught up in whether or not it “counts”. Instead, we encourage you to think about what activities or events or actions have become meaningful to you during COVID and tell your story. You might even think of your response as a kind of multimedia journal, or a sharable COVID-19 diary entry. Any way you’ve chosen to document how you’ve navigated COVID-19 can create a more nuanced understanding of this moment.
Creativity is part of production. If you produced something during COVID-19, that requires innovation and creativity. When or how you did your creating—be it during personal time, at work, at school—or where you were doesn’t matter to us. It’s still creativity. If that creativity happened during COVID-19, it counts. Submit away.
Yes, you should still participate. Regarding creativity, truly anything goes. You may not feel like you were super-creative during the pandemic—who does?—but you almost certainly got creative during COVID-19 even if you didn’t realize it. We all had to adapt during COVID-19, so anything you did to change your work, home-life, or help yourself or others with mental health and self-care means you were creating something new.
This is *not* a referendum on productivity—far from it. Instead, think about an everyday activity or event that became meaningful to you during the pandemic and explore what new (i.e. creative) things you had to do and are having to do to make it through.
If you still feel stuck, read over this non-exclusive list and see if it sparks anything.
- painting • pottery • sculpture • protest art • poetry • fiction • comics • journaling • digital art • photography • cooking • TikTok performances • coloring • building • gaming • gardening • making music • dancing • group projects.
*Other everyday activities that have become meaningful during the pandemic. This list is not exhaustive—far from it.
It makes perfect sense that you might not have recorded things regarding the everyday activities that have become meaningful to you during COVID-19.
Think about what you can share to give people a snapshot of your experience with creativity during COVID-19. And, though it shouldn’t need to be said, the pandemic isn’t over! If cooking was one of the outlets you turned to, perhaps you can stage a photo now of a meal—even if it wasn’t the “one” you’re talking about. For example, a photo of a book might help represent the time you spent reading to your grandson; a screenshot captured now of Zoom workspaces might help you tell a story about your pandemic experience long before that moment. the If all else fails, just tell your story and upload that as a word document.
Once you know what you’re going to upload, make sure that you have a copy of it on the device you’ll be using to fill out the survey!
First, you’re not alone. A lot of people are ending up having to create things during COVID-19 and do so in ways that they never wanted to. That’s okay here. There is no one emotion that is prioritized in relation to creativity.
Many people turn to creative outlets to process complex feelings that go far beyond the “positive,” including trauma and grief. Your stories are powerful and crucial to include in our cultural stories of the pandemic. Please respond as you are able. We simply urge you practice radical self-care when responding, particularly when sharing stories of creative grieving or responses to trauma, and be ready to care for yourself if responding may trigger difficult memories. Be ready to stop and reach out to your support network if needed!
You may want to adjust your answer to some questions on the survey. For our first question, “What made you want to create this,” be honest. You can just say “I didn’t want to create this; I had to.” and explain why you did it your way. The same goes for the rest of the questions. They’re optional, so just use the space as a prompt to tell your story during COVID-19.
The kinds of creativity and acts of adaptation that inevitably occurred for you at work, in school, in caregiving and beyond all count. Please submit to enrich our cultural story of the pandemic.
Your creativity doesn’t need to have occurred in “free” hours carved out magically somehow from the already difficult tasks of living through COVID-19. This is *not* a referendum on productivity—far from it. Instead, think about how you had to change, adapt, or modify everyday activities and events in your time at work, school, or caretaking in new ways. Pick one of them that feels like it would give others a window into your experience of the pandemic and share away. Again, anything—including everyday experiences—that became meaningful to you during the pandemic count. Explore all the new (i.e. creative) things you had to do in the course of your daily COVID-19 life and feel free to submit more than one example! We all are having to get creative to make it through!
Many people turn to creative outlets to process complex feelings that go far beyond the “positive,” including trauma and grief. Your stories are powerful and crucial to include in our cultural stories of the pandemic. Please respond as you are able. We simply urge you practice radical self-care when responding, particularly when sharing stories of creative grieving or responses to trauma, and be ready to care for yourself if responding may trigger difficult memories. Be ready to stop and reach out to your support network if needed!
You may want to adjust your answer to some questions on the survey. For our first question, “What made you want to create this,” be honest. You can just say “I didn’t want to create this; I had to.” and explain why you did it your way. The same goes for the rest of the questions. They’re optional, so just use the space as a prompt to tell your story during COVID-19.
Yes. Gaming is an act of online creation, often co-creation. Please submit! Screenshots can do wonders for translating parts of your gaming experience you’d like to share. If you’re sharing more complex files, please share a more compressed file like a .zip or .rar file.
Please go ahead and submit! Make a note in the section of the survey asking you to “describe” your creative work that your dance is original, but the music is not, and give us as much information about the music as you can. Thanks for thinking of this!
How the Survey Works:
On average it takes about 15-20 minutes to complete, but all questions are optional so it takes as long as it takes to share your story.
One of the crucial elements of this public humanities project includes having you upload a file (i.e. a picture, video, document, sound file, etc…) that gives people a window into your pandemic experience by way of a creative outlet or activity you’ve been turning to during COVID-19.
Because of this, you should take the survey on the piece of technology where you have this file representing your creative work or outlet ready to upload.
If you plan to take breaks in the middle of answering the survey, you may want to save your answers as you go along in a Word document or Notes file. That way, you can grab previously written answers quickly and cut-and-paste. This is also a good technique to use if you plan to submit multiple creative works.
This survey is unique in that it asks you to contribute a file—i.e. Upload an example of your creativity—online. To make this process safe for everyone, it requires logging in.
Everything will be protected using IRB-approved measures for confidential information to assure your privacy and security.
We will reach out to you using the email you provide should yours be one of the 200 creative works selected for our final exhibition, so be sure to use one you check regularly!
Because our survey is IRB-approved under an “exempt” protocol, we cannot offer any financial incentives for you to participate in Creativity in the Time of COVID-19 and share your stories of creativity.
Regarding benefits for participating, everyone who submits will get the opportunity to:
- Have their creative work and connected stories documented and included in a major online collection, and have the option to share them with wider audiences
- Contribute to history by preserving crucial moments and memories from COVID-19 for themselves and future generations
- Help ensure that diverse peoples, experiences, and communities are represented in our collective stories about the pandemic
All 200 creative works chosen for our final exhibition will be given a $100 gift card as a way of saying thank you for your work, and to finance the purchase of creative materials in the future.
Yes! This isn’t a conventional survey, and some questions may speak to some people more than others.
You may want to adjust your answer to some questions on the survey in ways that speak to the question but don’t answer it directly. This is a great strategy. All of our questions are optional for this very reason!
Take, for example, our first question: “What made you want to create this?” If your creativity came out of an assignment or a work task, this is NOT a sign that you shouldn’t submit. It’s an opportunity to explain. You can just say “I was prompted to create this by an assignment in class,” or “I had to do this as part of my work” and then use the space to explain why you did it the way you did, and why it feels meaningful to you in terms of expressing some slice of your experience during the pandemic. The same goes for the rest of the questions. Just use the questions as a prompt to tell your story during COVID-19 and skip questions that you can’t answer or adjust. Your story—told through your creativity during COVID-19—is what we care about!
First, that’s great that you worked with others! Ideally, everyone involved in creating this work should submit a response to the survey, so be sure to share the link with everyone and let them know. In this case, everyone should upload the same collectively-created piece—or their portion of it—and use the same title when asked for a title. Everyone should try to let us know they’re part of a group submission in the final question. “We are part of a shared submission, titled…” Make sure that you list the names of all your co-creators.
If it is possible to have each individual involved in your shared creative experience submit a unique survey, it really matters. Their personal experience of this shared experience of creativity during COVID-19 may be unique, and they also may want to create a new submission of their own in addition to your group submission based on something they did by themselves.
Alternatively, if there is a “point-person” who organized the creative process during COVID-19, have them submit. That person should:
- get permission from everyone involved (say, by email)
- collect all the email responses affirming that each group member gives their permission to share this work into one document upload this documentation of group permissions as one of the ten possible uploads for creative examples re: Creativity in the Time of COVID-19.
Yes, we just need you to note that you submitted something previously. The more responses, the better! Please use the same email address when you submit so that we can connect multiple survey entries by the same person together.
If you for any reason need to resubmit (note, this does not apply to submitting a second survey with different objects), please answer all survey questions as you normally would. However, in the last question, “If there is anything else (such as your identity, values, emotions, etc.) that shaped your creation of this work and would be meaningful to share, please do so in the space below,” please let us know 1) that this is a resubmission and 2) which name and email your first submission was sent under. If you remember the date you submitted your initial response, that would also be helpful! Please also explicitly state that you would like us to remove that first submission in favor of using the second.
If this happens, please email us at creativityandcovid@gmail.com. Let us know the file-size and the file-type you’re trying to upload and we’ll work out a way to help you submit!
Your ability to access our survey is incredibly important to us, so alerting us to challenges regarding social, cultural, and technological barriers facing anyone in the disability community is of the utmost importance for our team. Don’t hesitate to reach out at creativityandcovid@gmail.com.
Here’s the link to our accessibility google doc for the survey: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LGEOzE7jBjY4P0hmGeKFbsE37PcsJ0RCTkMZsyDMIDU/edit?usp=sharing. As the site grows, you should find ASL interpretations, plain English, large font, and more on this google doc. You can also request braille copies to be mailed to you if you email us at creativityandcovid@gmail.com.
If you feel more comfortable responding to the survey in ways that move beyond text—say, by recording your voice, or replying using video—you can upload your responses to the survey (in a Word doc, as a voice file, as a video in ASL, etc) as part of the 10 downloads available to submit creative work! Please email us if you have any trouble.
We are trying to document creative activity during the pandemic, and much of it is unfinished because of the difficult conditions around COVID-19. Unfinished work is just as valuable to submit—perhaps even more valuable—because it reflects the nature of what it is like to create during this pandemic.
In short, please submit unfinished work! Please also let us know with absolute clarity in your description of your piece that it is unfinished!
A lot of people are in this situation. As long as your project continued during COVID-19, it doesn’t matter when you started it. For the survey, focus your answers, as best you can, on the parts of creativity that happened—or are happening—for you during the pandemic.
No, this isn’t possible. However, participants who are part of the 200 selected submissions for our final exhibition will have the opportunity to share an artist statement. (If it is a minor error caught immediately after submission that is quickly fixable, see Resubmission FAQ) Submissions can be taken off of the digital collection through an email request.
Yes, you can use watermarks on any image files as a kind of artist signature. Please feel free.
The ultimate goal of Creativity in the Time of COVID-19 is to collect stories that are connected to examples of creativity during the pandemic. We need the upload to share the work in our final digital archive as well as select our 200 works for the in-person exhibition in Lansing, Michigan. Think about the upload as a creative work in and of itself—a kind of multimedia journaling where you consider how to share a small part of your COVID-19 experience with others.
We are doing this so that people can see, hear, and virtually experience diverse documentations of what others did throughout the pandemic. By sharing a piece of your COVID-19 experience, you get to shape the future of how the pandemic is portrayed, both now and in the future.
Absolutely! Please spread the word.