Apocalyptic temporalities and re-setting the future: using creative pedagogies to explore everyday cultures of grief during pandemic times

This article provides a metacritical analysis of an oral history and creative arts project undertaken collaboratively by the authors, located in the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton. The ‘Everyday Cultures of Grief’ project collected reflexive oral histories from palliative care clinicians and practitioners to evaluate ‘everyday’ subjective experiences and emotional responses to COVID-19 and its unequal impacts. Using the Spanish Flu pandemic of
1918 as a heuristic device, oral history interviews captured timely perspectives on the differing affective scales related to illness, dying, anticipatory grief and mourning during pandemic times. Whilst highlighting some of the key themes of this empirical research, the chief purpose of this article is to reflect on the project’s distinctive methodology, creative pedagogies and digital dissemination during the UK’s first lockdown. Creative pedagogies were expressed in a range of affective
articulations, including public history, creative writing and site-responsive theatre performance. The project itself raised questions about uses of the historical past, particularly in the context of Brexit populism, as well as the hermeneutics of historical inquiry when investigating the emotional registers of past and present pandemics.