Workers' Stories Project
We want to show future generations how workers experienced the COVID-19 crisis in Scotland and encourage workers to bring their story to life using any method they think captures what working life is like during this historic moment.
Covid-19 has transformed the workplace. If we don’t record workers’ experiences, then unique perspectives on this hugely important episode will be lost to history and future generations. Workers’ Stories was formed to collate submissions ranging from prosaic accounts of working life during the epidemic to artistic work influenced by the experience of working during Covid-19. Workers’ Stories will display our submissions in our online archive and look towards collaborative exhibitions in the future.
We are starting a project dedicated to collecting worker perspectives on the lockdown. Our working lives have been fundamentally changed by Covid-19. Key workers have faced huge dangers on the frontline of essential service delivery, unemployment has sky-rocketted and large numbers of people have begun remote working. Traditional barriers between the market and national obligation and work and home have broken down. Trade union meetings and protests have been disrupted but worker grievances have been aired in new and creative ways. We want to document worker experiences during the lockdown and after it. Your experience, no matter how mundane they may seem, are important to us. As the political narrative of Covid-19 is continually rewritten and it passes into history, workers’ experiences must be included.
Workers’ Stories is a project committed to recording worker perspectives from below. We want to hear your stories of the lockdown whether they are from hospitals and shops or of adapting to your jobs at home or navigating furlough and the benefits system. The ‘everyday’ experience of adapting to an unprecedented set of changes to our economy and society. Our project is based on an ethos of co-production. We want you to produce a submission on your own terms that you feel best captures your experience. But we are also happy to talk it over and support you.
