Mad COVID was a shared space for grassroots mental health survivor / service user projects that started during the COVID19 pandemic. This website is being maintained for historical purposes – please note that none of its projects are currently active.
Exploring ‘reopening’ through the objects and aids we carry
The ‘reopening’ of society, and the call to find a ‘new normal’, following two years of lockdowns poses particular difficulties for mad and disabled people – many of whom have experienced significant cuts, changes, disruptions and delays to their care during the pandemic.
This project, Baggage, aims to explore and highlight how mad people are experiencing ‘reopening’ through the objects and aids we carry with us as we venture out.
Browse through the gallery below to see and read about peoples experiences. Some are also shared on our Instagram here.
If you would like to contribute to this project, amazing! Please send a picture of the contents of your bag to madcovid.baggage@gmail.com. You are welcome to include a short piece of writing explaining the content / context of your image (300 words max) if you wish, although this is not essential. Please also include the following info when you send your email;
- Please let us know what name you would like to share your contribution under, or if you would like to remain anonymous
- A written description of the photograph (an image description)
- Any additional text you would like alongside your image (300 words max)
- Please let us know if you are happy for your contribution to be shared on social media
This project was inspired by the Instagram account @whores_handbags. For more inspiration we recommend visiting and supporting their page.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. We ask that you seek our permission before you use any of our material – this includes researchers who want to harvest our data for analysis!
Mad Covid 