Dispatches from the Virtual High Street: lockdown begins
Week 0
On the evening of Monday 16 March, after we’d written this lab note, the government urged everyone in the UK to work from home and avoid pubs and restaurants (a shift from the herd immunity approach to COVID-19). On Wednesday 18 March, before the announcement of school closures across the UK was made, we had signed up for a Zoom Pro account, having already signalled through social media that it was our intent to convene online. That day we hosted an improptu online Collective Coffee, as a simple experiment to see if convening over video calls might be useful for the doers, makers and creatives that have been coming together around activities on Dudley High Street.
By Friday 20 March we’d created the skeleton of a weekly rhythm of online sessions, with half of the open invitations intentionally very light touch, simply there as windows through the week when anyone feeling lonely might choose to take up an opportunity to connect. Friday 20 March would have seen the very first project starting in our High Street lab space, a weekend Global Design Jam. We invited participants to gently connect through a short Zoom check-in at the time we would have been coming together.
Week 1
On Monday 23 March we gently shifted into a rhythm of connection on what we call our Virtual High Street. That evening the UK went into lockdown.
It merits noting that our actions weren’t about shifting our in-person plans and activities online. That simply isn’t possible. While we had reached the week of our launch and so had energy and momentum as a team, the weekly rhythm we created to begin with online very much responded to the new context. The sessions themselves and their framing speak to our concerns around ensuring we continue to work on nurturing kindness, creativity and connection, while holding space to witness and acknowledge the very different challenges that people are facing in this time of global crisis.
Paying attention to patterns
We’re paying close attention to patterns which seem to be emerging through experiences, insights and reflections shared on the Virtual High Street, even at this early stage. Over time we’ll gain a sense of which amplify and which subside.
The following are what we noticed though the conversations in our first 10 days of convening online. Have you observed similar patterns or themes, or different ones?
People are swiftly designing and testing rituals, rhythms and structures at many layers.
Examples include people carving out new spaces, rhythms and times of the day to be present for themselves and their family (in households or digitally), as well as teams such as our lab team and the Top Church team creating rhythms of online connection.
People in our ecosystem are focused on hope, inspiration, gratitude and joy
… while at the same time being concerned for parents, neighbours and people they don’t know who will feel the impact of the virus and /or breaking systems more. We heard a lot about practices of gratitude, and in sharing our previous lab note with Fellow Travellers in WhatsApp we received thanks for lifting the ‘focus to a brighter future’ and optimism from people reimagining their work.
There is a new / renewed focus on, noticing and connection with the places we live
… a street level sense of place. Our physical worlds have suddenly shrunk, and without traffic obscuring what is around us and where we can move, many of us have been noticing and nurturing flows in our neighbourhoods.
There is a new / renewed focus on, noticing and connection with nature, green spaces and growing.
While we did host a specific conversation around finding solace in nature, nature connection was a consistent theme across a number of conversations, with people already exploring green spaces they didn’t usually frequent, as well as noticing nearby nature.
People in our ecosystem are paying attention to cultures and systems, and embracing this crisis as an opportunity to let go and slow down etc.
Only a couple of days into lockdown people were voicing intent to go offline, take a slow digital week and put boundaries around use of tech in thier days. There have been reflections and questions about how we might use this time as a deeper planning period. People have been noticing and nurturing slow living patterns in their lives, to try to decouple from a collective addiction to outputs / units of labour / efficiency. Accompanying this, people seem to be turning towards a nurturing of relationships which focus on affection, care, shared experiences and emotional connections (Bollier and Helfrich call this ‘care-wealth’).
Creativity and generosity abound in our ecosystem!
There have been so many ideas shared and woven into these very first conversations during the pandemic. Both ideas from around the world that are inspiring people, and ideas that local people in Dudley have that they would like to try out. All sorts of offers have been made by local people with a range of skills and talents to share, as well as offers of seeds, food and simply company (digitally).
Tech to connect is both wonderful and overwhelming while it’s mostly all we can use.
We’ve been bringing together online hosting tips as a result of witnessing beautiful online hosting in our team and among our Fellow Travellers, and through some coaching a team member participated in. We have felt the benefit of short and regular interactions when meeting online. We’ve reduced the length of some activities for Week 2 to help reduce online fatigue.
People are focusing on inner practices and paying attention to what they need to do / not do — noticing risks and opportunities.
People have been actively embracing the possibilities of this new context with the necessary care for their own emotional and mental health in a time of crisis. In different guises, we’ve heard about reflective processes which involve: observation; witnessing (without judgement); proactive acceptance of what is arising… leading to intentional action / inaction. There has been honest sharing and acknowledgement of where people are at personally in terms of this dramatic shift in context and the impact upon our emotions and risks to mental health, family and financial security. There has been explicit acknowledging of privilege in terms of different security of positions affecting what is possible. Checking in and acknowledging where people are at has been collectively recognised as a helpful practice, as people will experience this crisis in different ways, at different paces, with different rhythms of highs and lows.
Many of the above patterns speak to a short set of customs we’d like to encourage on the Virtual High Street. These were drawn from our lab principles at the beginning of Week 1.
Activity on the Virtual High Street in Weeek 0 and Week 1
The above patterns emerged through the following:
- 2 x CoLab Collective Coffee sessions (5 participants in each) — we have never had a regular rhythm of convening as a Collective, we’re now creating this opportunity weekly.
- 2 x Lab Team learning and reflection sessions (6 participants).
- A Yam Yam Jam connecting session created to hold a space for jammers who hadn’t met to connect even though the jam was postponed (4 participants).
- Serendipitea, a gentle invitation to connect online, an alternative to open house hours in our High Street space (3 participants).
- A lunchtime Creative Conversation, this is a kind of alternative to a Food for Thought bring and share activity we would have launched (16 participants).
- A Regenerative Design session, a new idea to start convening a community of practice (5 participants).
- Fellow Travellers discussion on Zoom, the first in a new series of discussions and conevening of our Fellow Travellers developed to build on our lab note from 16 March (6 participants).
- A Solace in Nature session, developed in response to the pandemic and a hashtag people had starting using (3 participants).
The Virtual High Street (our Zoom Pro account) is also being used by our neighbours on the actual High Street, Top Church, to bring together a Bible Study Group. Kath from Top Church, a CoLab Dudley Collective member also planned an Afternoon Tea, open to all, to start in Week 2 on the Virtual High Street.
