Viral Lessons

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ECAH/EuroMedia2020 - Keynote Presentation

Anne Boddington, Kingston University, United Kingdom

Many have likened the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic to the experience of war time, except with all the people on the same side against an invisible invader that is indiscriminate, transgresses national borders and disproportionally attacks the socially and economically vulnerable. Across the world, countries and communities have been “locked-down” and retreated to the relatively “safety” of their domestic environments. Our cities and educational institutions were closed and stood silent, their usual vivacious inhabitants physically dispersed, but digitally connected, while the sun shone, Spring “sprung”, summer arrived, and the natural environment flourished with our absence. We retreated, but institutions continued to function, significantly weakened and often struggling to react fast enough to “work differently”, online and “at home”. Work, home, social lives and our different personas all overlaid upon one another. Individually and collectively we have all been forced to confront the ways we manage each of these lives and how they do or don’t intersect and interconnect. In the University context, governance and resilience have been tested, as was the leadership and practical capacity and capability of working and learning remotely. What to do, how to behave, who and what mattered to us as social beings all questioned by COVID’s threat. A threat, that, like climate emergency, artificial intelligence and racial (in)equality has long been known about; but where other technocratic and economic values had perhaps overwritten our preparedness for what we have had to confront. Whatever the rights and wrongs of “lockdown” and the pitching of wealth against health, this existential moment has presented an opportunity to reflect, prior to addressing the far more challenging task of rethinking and re-opening our worlds, economies and institutions. This presentation focuses specifically on living with COVID-19 and devising a framework and a series of principles for unlocking universities and reflecting on the role, purpose and contribution. It then takes a more detailed look at the lessons we might take from our “viral experiences” and how we might reflect upon and revisit creative education and its social, cultural and economic contribution in our “next normal” and imminent futures.

Visit the ECAH2020 website: ecah.iafor.org/ecah2020
Visit the EuroMedia2020 website: euromedia.iafor.org/euromedia2020

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