Museums appeal for stories of life in lockdown

 

Cavan County Museum have received dozens of wonderful stories and images from people across the county, thus ensuring that memories from this present and uncertain time are preserved for future generations.

Among the most recent is a letter looking at Coronavirus through the eyes of a child.

“One day during Covid-19 in Cavan” is a beautiful short story written by 8-year-old Seán Óg Hanley, accompanied with artwork by his brother, Cian Hanley.

 

 

A story published in this week's Anglo-Celt newspaper about the unique initiative.

 

Damian McCarney

 

In 1947, the greatest snowfall in living memory hit Ireland - the Big Snow. With temperatures refusing to rise above zero for too long, January’s snowfall lay where it fell, a luxurious bedsheet for the subsequent blankets of snow to cover every inch of the country with the blizzards of February and March.

The Irish Times reports from March of ‘47 spoke of rooftops of buried houses in Mayo appearing as merely humps of snow against a white expanse. Snowdrifts saw families trapped in their homes for weeks on end - this isolation was anything but social. The Anglo-Celt reported of communication links completely going down, and roads being impassable. There were fatalities too - estimates put the figure nationally at around 600. There’s dreadful reports of children in Dublin drowning when the ice on which they were playing gave way. An 11-year-old boy met the same appalling fate at a disused Belturbet quarry, which had filled with water and froze over; a 12 year old girl who was playing with him somehow managed to escape.
“People now are really interested in how life was for people during the Big Snow,” says County Museum curator Savina Donohoe. “What was going on, and how it affected them, how people were able to live.
“I think we’re in a similar, or even much worse situation now.”
The museum’s website has a short oral account by a lady called Susan McCaffrey, recalling her experience of the epic event as a young girl in Virginia. The charming piece has no major drama, just a gentle, recollection of her brothers having to walk a mile to work in difficult conditions, and snowdrifts enabling the kids to walk along the tops of hedges lining their home lane. Its value lies in its authenticity.
Through their ‘Share Your Story - Cavan 2020’ campaign the museum is hoping people will provide similar accounts of how the Coronavirus has impacted on them. As one of a dozen local authority run museums nationwide, Cavan County Museum want to play their part, and be “actively involved” during these times.
“We are trying to keep museums to the forefront of people’s mind during this terribly difficult time. We are very much committed to capturing people’s stories for the future, so we can look back and see how this whole time affected people in whatever way - no story is too big or too small. It can be as simple as not being able to go to the shops. It’s just how it is affecting people. And of course I’m very interested in hearing Cavan people’s stories.”
The life in lockdown accounts can be hand written, emailed, recorded, videoed - any way you want to submit it is fine.
“There’s not a ‘good story’ or a ‘bad story’, I’d hate people to think this is an exercise in English, it’s not, it’s actually far from it,” Savina stresses.
She’s eager for people to tell their stories in their own words.
“I got a lovely one that was emailed into me this morning,” she happily reports on Wednesday.
“There’s no right or wrong - I’m just looking for experiences, how people felt, what the whole thing was like - how it’s changed our lives - there might be parts of that for the good, or it might all be terrible.
“Maybe people are slowing down a bit - they have the gift of time, something they never had because we’re just not able to do all we normally do - even sharing that.”
She also notes that given many of us have slowed down a bit, that this project could give them something to do.
Can Savina envisage future county museum curators sifting through this catalogue of memories for future exhibitions, say 50 years on from COVID-19?
“Yes I do see that kind of thing and looking back and saying: ‘That’s how that family that sent it in were affected, God it’s terrible’, or ‘This is how they managed’. I think that’s really important and we today can do that, make the history for the future, and we are in a much better position than our ancestors to do that.”
The Celt notes that our ancestors who endured momentous events, such as the Big Snow of ‘47 had their stories told by newspapers, and future historians and researchers would have went to the papers’ archives for the contemporaneous accounts.
“I think we will get more individual stories this way, more personal stories. There will be big national stories that we get every day with statistics - but these are more how it really affected people’s every day lives - that’s how I see it.
“I’m really passionate about story telling, and I know it’s part of our idea to develop a story telling centre here in Cavan in the museum - that was very much our plan going forward. There’s a great gift that Irish people have in telling stories - and listening to stories and sharing them.
“It’s the human stories I really want to capture - the national stories, the papers will do all that,” says Savina, adding that she doesn’t intend editing the accounts.
Once she has momentum behind adults sharing their Coranvairus stories, she hopes to attract children’s stories.

Preserving personal accounts

“We will care for it, and preserve it,” she says of the collection of stories, but what she will actually do with them remains to be seen.
“I don’t know what we’ll do with them - we just want to have a collection of them. It’s really important to our job that that we collect and care for what we collect and then make it accessible - with people’s permission - for other people to use.
“There’s great potential to go further with this,” Savina enthuses.
The museum staff could pen an account themselves, as like the rest of us, the have not gone untouched by the pandemic. The museum was adding the final touches to its exhibition, compiled by its researcher Michael Finnegan on the War of Independence 1919-21 when they were closed to the public. While Savina is permitted to go into the landmark building, it will remain closed to visitors until Cavan County Council direct them otherwise.
“We had so many bookings and we have the lovely new room at the back of the museum,” Savina says of a new extension late last year providing exhibition and events space with kitchen and toilet facilities.
“We look forward to welcoming people back again and working with groups,” she says pausing to acknowledge that no-one knows what restrictions, if any, will be in place and assures: “We’ll work around whatever we’re asked to do.”
To take part in ‘Share Your Story - Cavan 2020’ simply send your story or media to info@cavanmuseum.ie or post to Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan with the subject ‘Share Your Story - Cavan 2020’ on the envelope.