Diary in the Plague Year: Roaming the lockdown in images and words in a year like no other

Farmer, Paul (2020) Diary in the Plague Year: Roaming the lockdown in images and words in a year like no other. Independent Publishing Network, Stithians, Cornwall. ISBN 978-1-83853-382-3

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Abstract / Summary

This book explores issues of 'inequality and storytelling' in the context of the discussion of an event and global collective experience from the viewpoint and in terms of the issues of Cornwall, a part of the United Kingdom far from metropolitan centres and consistently labelled as culturally peripheral, its expressions therefore marginal, irrelevant, unexplored, unpublished, discounted.

The project therefore works within aspects of the Creative Industries Futures strand in terms of the use of social media to develop and share a peripheral account and explores the relationship between the common voices that find themselves through Instagram and Facebook and those that attain publication in arguably more privileged modes of a kind that can find themselves on library shelves and repositories. (It has proved impossible so far to place them in the contemporary distribution systems that allow the sales of books through retail outlets, a useful insight from the research project this represents here.)

‘diary of the plague year’ uses colour images and text in an exploration of the landscapes of the early lockdown in the mining and coastal areas of the area between Falmouth and the North Coast of Cornwall. It is embedded in a kind of ‘Year Zero’ of historical events of our times.

Beginning on the 22nd March 2020, this is a diary in images of Cornwall and words written as a response to an unprecedented experience, the playout of which is still unclear.

The author bought an electric bike as lockdown was declared and as statutory exercise this gave a range of about 25 miles around my home in the former mining district of Cornwall. Each day I would post an image from the day’s expedition on Instagram and Facebook, along with a piece of writing about my experiences, or thoughts invoked by them and lockdown. At first these were short and simple, but they became deeper and more detailed.
These are collected here as they happened, in diary form, as an unfolding of that strange time, which, although only recently past, is already the subject of wonder and even a kind of nostalgia.

Item Type:	Book
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Cornwall; Lockdown; Covid19; Coronavirus; social media; book ;landscape; cycling; walk; coast; rural; exclusion; pandemic;
ISBN:	978-1-83853-382-3
Subjects:	History, Geography & Environment Creative Art & Design > Photography Creative Art & Design Communication History, Geography & Environment > Cornish Studies Social Work & Social Policy Computing & Data Science Communication > Creative Writing
Courses by Department:	The School of Film & Television
Depositing User:	Paul Farmer
Date Deposited:	08 Mar 2021 15:33
Last Modified:	18 Nov 2024 14:28
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/4241

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