Quarantine Dispatch #1: Overcoming cancelled aspirations

How are you feeling? What are you thinking? What’s happening? Bored, stressed, inspired, uninspired, calm, restless, frustrated, anxious? There’s no “right” way to cope with a pandemic. Reading through these submissions, despite the practical differences of each situation, we felt a reassuring sense of familiarity and gratitude. Maybe you can too. 

Lisa Keane , LCF Fashion Textiles student:

I start my day off writing down what I am grateful for, anything and something “new” every day: Like childhood memories with my sister, family, the peng coffee I make in the mornings, the secret Jamaican recipes my nan taught me, my boyfriend’s bad jokes that make time pass faster and for the different crafts I have been taught. It sounds cheesy but it keeps me sane and starts my day the right way. 

Apart from cooking, I have only just been able to begin being “creative” again. Working so hard to get to show at this year’s final press show, for it to be cancelled, took me to a dark place.

The-what’s-the-point-anymore place. Art school online- what? I picked myself up and I am just trying to do my best, the situation is out of our control and you/I can only choose what attitude we have towards it. So I choose to stay positive, decorate my life in any way possible: Pick wildflowers on my walk back home from Tesco, paint in watercolours in my garden, crochet something with no real idea of what it is going to be, watch the sun going down and cooking as if each meal is my last. Inject positivity, dream, and reflect on the reality I want to live in.