At the beginning of April, the DiDe consortium brought together academics, practitioners, and interested members of the public to explore the contested concept of ‘closure’ at Durham University. Amongst the presentations was one by our very own colleague, Dr Georgina Robinson (Durham University, UK), entitled ‘Expressions of closure through the National Covid Memorial Wall’. What follows is a brief extract of her work surrounding the Wall – a detailed case study will be published soon.
The Wall’s foundations
The National Covid Memorial Wall is a grassroots memorial which stretches half-a-kilometre of the Albert Embankment of the River Thames, located directly opposite the UK Houses of Parliament in London. It is covered with individually hand-painted red hearts, each of which represents one British person who has died with Covid-19 listed as a contributing factor to their death. The Wall was created by a community of volunteers, who came together following a call for action in the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Facebook Group in 2021. Between 29 March and 8 April 2021, some 1,500 volunteers came together to hand-paint some 150,837 hearts on the Wall – representing the exact number of deaths to this date. The Wall was created so that those who had died were remembered and the scale of the loss was represented. Over the course of 11 days, the group transformed the previously white stone wall to appear as what Fran Hall – one of the volunteers – called ‘a blood-red rebuke, a reminder of the catastrophic death toll that the country had suffered’ (Hall 2023: 254).
Logistical support was offered by the activist group Led By Donkeys, but the ‘ownership’ of the Wall has remained firmly with the bereaved. The Wall was not intended to be a political protest as such, but the nature of the deaths and the positionality of the Wall has made its politicisation somewhat inevitable. Indeed, there is some irony in the fact that the Wall sits next to St Thomas’s Hospital where Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK during the Covid-19 crisis period, found himself in intensive care after contracting Covid-19 himself in April 2020. Arguably, the Wall’s positionality symbolically represents the divide between those who sought to save lives (healthcare workers) and those whose decisions ended lives (parliamentarians). The symbolism of the Wall’s positionality is only growing stronger, with it now being used regularly as the backdrop of news reports concerning the pandemic and the UK’s Covid Inquiry. The Wall therefore hosts this dual function, but the scale of the deaths it represents is perhaps its most powerful role – regardless as to whether this represents catastrophic decision making or loss, or both. Having personally visited the Wall, I can concur that its physical scale is immense: standing at one end, you cannot see where it finishes and every panel you can see is packed full of hearts. Indeed, it takes approximately ten minutes to walk the Wall’s length at pace. This illustrates the importance of the Wall’s physicality for its message to be conveyed, representing the otherwise incomprehensible nature of the scale of loss encountered. The colour red against the white stone wall only adds to its poignancy, making the Wall visible from a distance.
The Wall was not necessarily intended to become a lasting or permanent memorial for the Covid dead. While the importance of the Wall was widely acknowledged upon its initial completion, its future was (and remains) uncertain. Despite the technically illegal action of the volunteers, no attempts to remove the hearts on the Wall have been made to date. However, the Wall had not been ‘future-proofed’, and nature began to take its course on the Wall within a few months of its initial completion. By August 2021, it became apparent that the thousands of hand-painted hearts were beginning to fade and unless action was taken, the memorial could soon cease to exist.
Realising this, a smaller group of the initial volunteers came together with the goal of replenishing the fading hearts and planning for the Wall’s future upkeep. The efforts of the group, now known as the ‘Friends of the Wall’ – a group of 10 volunteers, all themselves bereaved by Covid-19 – are the sole reason why the Wall still exists. Over the last few years, the group have become stewards of the Wall, volunteering their time on Friday mornings to paint new hearts, replenish old ones, and write dedications on the Wall at the request of bereaved individuals. The hearts were initially counted by a machine learning tool, but as the memorial has grown, the exact number of hearts is now unknown. Nevertheless, the hearts represent a growing number of nearly a quarter of a million UK Covid-related deaths.
The Wall as a physical and digital entity
As part of our work with the Digital Death Project, we have been very much concerned with practices lying between on- and off-line memorial behaviours. The National Covid Memorial Wall is a particularly unique example to explore within this context because the possibilities to engage with the Wall extend well beyond its physical-material entity: the National Covid Memorial Wall takes both physical and digital forms.
Conventionally, memorials are confined to a specific location but in an increasingly digital age, some memorials have become transportable or, at least, ‘accessible’ in numerous locations – and this is true of the National Covid Memorial Wall. With the physical memorial situated in London but representing deaths from across the UK, the Friends have made extensive efforts to enable interaction with the Wall from a distance. These include, for example:
- The ability to virtually walk the Wall
Launched following the Wall’s initial completion, the Wall’s website includes a ‘Walk the Wall’ feature – an interactive panoramic image of the Wall in its entirety, as it appeared on 8 April 2021. One can virtually ‘walk’ the Wall by scrolling laterally through the images of the Wall. As one moves through the images, the stories of sixteen bereaved individuals are played and the total number of hearts – displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen – gradually increases, eventually reaching a total of 150,837 hearts. Virtually walking the Wall offers a unique means through which to attempt to comprehend the scale of the Wall – and number of deaths – without having to visit it in person.
- The ability to place a dedication on the Virtual Dedication Page
Launched in 2022, the website also features a Virtual Dedication Page which consists of user-generated content. Open to tributes for anyone who died with Covid-19 (whether from the UK or abroad), the site allows individuals to post a dedication of up to 500 characters, a photograph, the name of the deceased, and the name(s) of those leaving the dedication.
- The ability to connect via social media
In addition to the website, the Friends of the Wall also have an active social media presence across Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok. Of all the Friends’ digital efforts, their social media activity appears to be the most engaged with – this is especially true in the case of Facebook. The most interactive feature is facilitated by the Friends going ‘live’ on Facebook during their volunteering sessions every Friday. Alongside engaging with the community of Covid bereaved, the Friends social media activity has raised awareness of the Wall’s existence and the continuing growing number of UK Covid dead.
Bringing the physical ‘to life’ through digital means
It has become indisputably apparent that the Wall is far more than the physical entity that exists in London – but it is that physical entity which is a manifestation of the bereaved community, their losses, and their lives beyond bereavement. While the physical memorial inevitably unites the bereaved and is the central focal point of that community, the digital means through which one can engage with the Wall may facilitate wider scope.
Emphasising the importance of employing digital tools to share the Wall as a manifested entity, it has become clear when giving presentations about the Wall that descriptions only go so far. During my presentation, I showed around 50 photographs of the Wall in an attempt to bring the ‘real’ Wall in London to the conference room in Durham. Countless delegates noted how the images moved them. Above all else, the most ‘powerful’ part of my presentation came when I showed a video of the Wall which I captured in April 2024, which is sped up by seven-times the original speed and silenced. This video captures the Wall in its entirety. What is afforded, or lost, by the digital representation? Can the digital representation ever ‘live up’ to the ‘real thing’? Either way, this ‘rapid’ capture of the Wall demonstrates its sheer size (see: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Aa38pZnUtng).
To conclude, three points which emphasise the significance of the Wall’s digitalisation are worth highlighting:
- The Wall would likely not exist had it not been for the mobilisation of action via social media. Likewise, its maintenance is reliant upon donations from the public, which are also facilitated online.
- Awareness of the Wall’s existence largely stems from its online presence. Although the Wall is very much on London’s tourist trail, there are no signs directing you to the Wall. Observing online interactions, it is clear that many people discover the Wall and seek further information about it online.
- It is abundantly clear that the way that most of the bereaved community engages with the Wall on a regular basis is via digital means. This was evident both during my time volunteering and other visits to the Wall, with the number of dedications and check-ups requested online, and also by the number of people visiting who said that they had learned of the Wall’s existence online. The value and sense of connectivity that the digitalisation brings is also exceptionally evident amongst the many comments posted on the Wall’s social media sites.
Reference
Hall, Fran. 2023. ‘A Wall of Pain and Love’ in When This is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic, pp. 252-261, eds. Amy Cortvriend, Lucy Easthope, Jenny Edkins, and Kandida Purnell. Bristol: Polity Press.