Covid-19 Culture: What we'd like to bring back from the pandemic

March 2020. More and more governments ask their citizens to confine themselves to their homes as COVID-19 outbreak spread.

Less than a month later, about half of the world's population was under some form of lockdown, with more than 3.9 billion people in over 90 countries urged or, ordered to stay at home.  

Five years on, the Euronews Culture team has been wondering: Is there anything we miss about lockdown, and what would we bring back?

More free culture, please

By Sarah Miansoni 

When lockdown, or 'confinement' as it was known in France started on 17 March 2020, I decided to stay in my 18m2 flat in the suburbs of Paris, where I lived alone. It was a stupid idea. 

In the first weeks of quarantine, I tried everything to kill boredom, including learning a choreography for a Dua Lipa song on YouTube – which is tricky when you can’t extend your leg without touching a wall. 

I also remember thinking about the culture I had not experienced in my first semester as a student in the French capital. All the things that I had put off because they were too expensive, or I didn’t have time, or I didn’t especially feel like doing - lockdown gave me a chance to catch up. 

Productions shut down, festivals were cancelled, and artists were left wondering when they would perform again. So, instead of waiting for things to go back to normal, many creatives and cultural institutions chose to put their work online, free of charge, for everyone to see.  

The Royal Opera House in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Paris Opera all broadcast recordings of their shows. In April 2020, more than 725,000 people tuned in to watch the Met's At-Home Gala, which featured more than 40 of its opera singers, all performing from home. 

Top-tier museums including the Paris Louvre and the British Museum offered virtual tours of their collections. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which was in the process of expanding its online resources when Covid-19 hit, experienced an explosion in traffic on its website and social media channels.  

For movie-lovers who lamented missing the Cannes Film Festival, the French art house movie chain mk2 launched its “Festival at home”, each week releasing a carefully curated selection of films for free online. 

There was also theatre. I remember watching a strange play featuring a naked woman talking to a white horse, simply because it was made available. Would I have booked a ticket to see this show live? Probably not, but that’s what made the experience so alluring. 

COVID-19 forced me to question the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to appreciate art. I subscribe to the opinion that there is nothing like hearing live music or seeing a play in a packed theatre. I am also someone who discovered John Singer Sargent’s paintings on Instagram and developed my knowledge of cinema and became a film-lover through streaming platforms.

I did not get to enjoy all the art that lockdown had to offer, of course. After all, I still had classes to attend, essays to write - not to mention the daily hour of laying in my bed staring at the ceiling. But this moment showed that it was possible for even the most established (some would say rigid) institutions to adapt and to reach new audiences. More of that again please.

My Warzone lifeline

By Theo Farrant 

Covid lockdown was a bizarre, yet oddly magical, era. It was a time when babies were being baptised by priests with water guns, everyone and their nan was binge watching Tiger King, popping down to your local Tesco for an hour-long queue felt like a night out on the town, and Jackie Weaver had absolutely no authority. While it was an incredibly tough period for many, I have to admit - I thrived.

The pandemic may have completely derailed a big chunk of my university experience - a time meant for meeting new people and making questionable life choices - but for someone who has always prospered as a bit of a house goblin, it was, in many ways, a dream come true. The minimal responsibilities, unlimited time with my two cats and being actively encouraged to stay indoors. I was basically considered a national hero by the government for doing what I do best - absolutely nothing. 

If there’s one thing that truly defined that funny old time for me, it was lockdown gaming. More specifically, Call of Duty: Warzone. The game had just dropped, completely free to play for all, and it was phenomenal. It was Activision’s attempt to cash in on the battle royale trend - popularised by PUBG and Fortnite - and it turned out to be a masterpiece.  

For non-gamers reading, battle royale games are essentially like The Hunger Games: you’re dropped into a map with a hundred or so other players, you have to scavenge for weapons, and fight to be the last one standing. Warzone took this formula and cranked it up to the next level - with an incredible open map, thrilling multiplayer gameplay, and the perfect balance of chaos and strategy. Within a month of the game’s release, it had 50 million players. 

Despite not being a massive gamer myself, I became hooked. I grew up on Call of Duty classics like Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, but my interest gradually faded as life got busier. Yet, with nowhere to go and an urgent need for some form of a social life outside of my family bubble, my friends and I found ourselves logging in most nights to laugh, shout, and embrace the sheer mayhem of Warzone. It was something to look forward to each day. 

Anyone who played it during that time will understand me. The desperate struggle to get your first win. The pure euphoria when you finally did. It might sound trivial, but it was somewhat of a lifeline - a way to stay connected with my friends and a much-needed form of escapism that kept me sane while the world outside felt like it was falling apart. Now that life is back to normal, we don’t game together as much anymore - if at all. Jobs, responsibilities, and reality have taken over. What I would do for one more late night of lockdown Warzone…

A renewed sense solidarity

By David Mouriquand 

It’s hard for me to be completely nostalgic about Covid lockdown and the world coming to a screeching halt. Granted, it allowed many to take up new hobbies, to master the technicalities of sourdough bread, and binge watch Twin Peaks for the 100th time. But all that came with the anxiety-inducing feeling of uncertainty, paranoia about toilet paper shortages, and the human cost of a deadly virus that no one fully understood.  

Five years on, the one thing I do miss the most about the lockdown is a renewed sense of community that quarantine managed to spark, as if common psychological distress awakened a heightened sense of fraternity. Even in the smallest of ways.  

I was living in Berlin for the lockdown and like many around Europe, people were organising makeshift performances on their balconies. There was a trumpet player on a balcony near my flat that regaled the neighbourhood with his compositions and temporarily soothed the collective mood. Outside of lockdown, people would have complained about the noise. Not during though.

I also remember one young girl learning how to play the Amélie Poulain soundtrack. As potentially grating as it could have been to hear the same piano-led Yann Tiersen track every evening, there was something uplifting about hearing her progress day by day.  

People listened. They paid attention. And they applauded. 

Then there was the acknowledgement of the importance of essential workers – specifically hospital staff. They were celebrated with applause, the daily banging of pots and pans, and even some window displays. These may have been hollow gestures compared to much-deserved pay-rises, but it was a long-overdue show of respect and gratitude which felt important. Considering both my parents were on the frontline as medical professionals, there was something about this routine that made me happy. More than that, it made me hopeful that Covid could be a turning point, and that this renewed appreciation for the “everyday heroes” so often taken for granted could be here to stay.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be, and soon after lockdown lifted, many reverted back to their old ways. No more impromptu concerts fostering a sense of neighbourhood spirit and community. And certainly no more clapping for those who held it all together while the rest of us were inside.

Where is the balcony or door clapping for carers now? What happened to the rejuvenated appreciation for those who truly make a difference? Not just hospital staff, but supermarket workers, teachers, food delivery workers... Where are we now when we should be supporting them when they’re in the streets asking for better working conditions and fairer wages?

The lockdown temporarily roused a sense of solidarity with those who weren’t invincible like comic book superheroes but kept on working through their struggles. Clapping should have been the beginning. Instead, it confirmed the frustrating human capacity to forget all-too-quickly. 

Is it possible to have nostalgia for a pandemic lockdown? Not fully. However, if there’s one thing I’d bring back is that briefest of times when public solidarity felt like it was signaling prolonged positive change. And I'd hope we’d make it stick this time.

Seeing (and hearing) in a new light

By Jonny Walfisz

As a journalist instead of a frontline worker, I had the benefit of moving my whole professional life to the confines of home.

As I settled into the increasing months of isolation in a south London flat, the world outside my window hadn’t dulled at all. Living on an important tributary road to the capital, trucks and lorries clattered past our windows at all hours of the day bringing the goods we were all relying on. From the viewpoint of my room, London was the same chaotic busy sprawl. A non-stop hubbub of activity driven by the desires of commerce.

It was only through the daily hour-long walks we were permitted that I found out how untrue that was. That spring in London was blazing hot and each day, I’d use my lunch time to quickly assemble a sandwich and start exploring the streets around my flat. There was the suburban London that had retreated inside, leaving roads empty and full of promise.

In place of the basic arterial routes to convey people from location to location, I discovered an abstract pattern of intrigue. A suburban sprawl of at first identical houses revealed themselves as an endless array of intricately detailed art projects, each an expression of the owners’ personalities encased within the confines of 19th century housing developments. I found my favourite tree, a sycamore in a front garden that a family lit up in deep purple lighting at night. There were now my preferred secret alleyways and cut-throughs, missed by the brute force tool Google Maps. Most delightfully, if I had enough time to reach Nunhead cemetery, up the hill I had a bench facing an avenue of trimmed trees that revealed a panorama of London.

Becoming an amateur cartographer of my sleepy bit of suburbia was just the beginning. On weekends, I’d cycle out over Tower Bridge and explore the city centre. Standing in the middle of the road at Oxford Circus will remain one of my most surreal experiences, so throbbing is it usually under the soles of endless tourists and heaving bus tyres. Will birdsong ever be so easily heard in Zone 1 again? Maybe not. And while I don’t wish for London or any city to return to such a mandated silence again, I will always cherish the opportunity to explore and see my home in a new light.