A/UK 4th Anniversary: the pandemic hasn't stopped being a major experience. Our Before&Now app still wants to capture that

To access app, click the picture above, or click here

Within our resources (which is mostly our co-creators and networks, and the talents and passions they share), we’ve tried to be innovative, in the way that we facilitate the voices of localities and communities.

One thing that certainly did seem to work, in April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, was our Before&Now app (see our original blog on it).

It was a simple device, accessible by smartphone, which asked users to report, in a line or two, on the distance between the spooky, upended spring of early Covid-19, and the bustling, stressed world it had put into suspended animation. We asked people to sort their experiences into three themes - “About Me”, “About Us”, “About the World” (corresponding to A/UK’s I - We - World heuristic).

If you see the book icon on the app, that shows a whole list of entries that occurred roughly around April-May 2020. They’re striking, funny, moving (see a selection on the slideshow below)

So… It’s now 10-11 months on from that moment, with a second islands-wide lockdown still operating, but with a road plan - however contingent - to gradually normalise conditions, as the vaccinations sweep across the country.

After this rollercoaster year, how are we regarding the difference between Before Covid and Now? We invite you to fill in the fields, and share the app with those who might also want to be part of this “mood map”

As we said the first time.. we are NOT harvesting any emails here. Names can be your own, or a made-up name. It’s not identities we’re looking for, but your contribution to the collective landscape of feelings and details - measuring changes before the Coronavirus, and now.

We also want to publish these observations, so that everyone can sense what the collective shifts are. As you can see from the handheld photo above, there is a book icon at the bottom right of the app. Click on that and you’ll see all of the entries so far.

Below is an video from Glide, showing you how to turn Before&Now into an app on your iPhone or Android phone (essentially, you add the web page to your “Home Screen”).

We’re so interested to hear the details you’ve noticing, about these potentially transformative times!