Stay Local

STAY LOCAL

Where have you been since the pandemic began? For most of us, national lockdowns and travel restrictions have meant staying local and really getting to know what’s already on our doorsteps. Some moved to new (and old) places. Many got to know our neighbours in ways we might not have done if it were’t for the pandemic, seeding and nurturing our ties to places and faces.

The map below pinpoints the places women have spent their time during lockdown – click each marker to read someone’s memory. Make your mark on our map and tell us where you were throughout lockdowns by clicking the button below. Your memory will be added as a map marker!

INSIDE/OUT: MEETING THE NEIGHBOURS

Led by local artist Lucy Marriott, Inside/Out started as a lockdown photography project and a means of connecting people in the community of Sharrow and Nether Edge. Alongside the images, conversations with people were recorded and printed in local newspaper Sharrow Today. People had the chance to read about their neighbours’ and fellow community members’ experiences in a time of intense social isolation. The project was continued as things began to open up again in Spring 2021, this time with a focus on how people were using their outdoor spaces. All of the images and conversations are now exhibited at Sharrow Community Forum.

\ INSIDE CONVERSATIONS

A woman with purple bobbed curly hair smiles brightly at the camera. She sits on her doorstep and her front door is ajar behind her. She is wearing a striped top, a dark green lightweight jacket, and a sage green woven scarf.

A boy and a girl, aged maybe 9-12 years old, hold two younger children (toddler-age girls) on their left hips. The babies look unsure of the photographer, but the older children smile warmly at the lens. The older boy wears a camo-print jacket with the hood up, while the older girl wears a dark red hijab over a turquoise t shirt and star print leggings. The babies both wear blue jeans leggings and have their hair tied back in little plaits and top knots.

A young man in his twenties leans on his door frame. He wears a light grey t shirt and his black shoulder-length hair is pushed back with a headband. He smiles warmly and looks off to the left of the lens.

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“You see people working together. You see the communities working together and trying to keep you safe and they help me, sometimes just a call to ask me, ‘How are you feeling today?’ and it’s like oh, someone is calling. When you’re hearing other people… the more you feel like oh, I’m not alone.”

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“It’s very hard to explain to kids what is lockdown, what is coronavirus. My son is always asking me, ‘Why is shop closing, mama, why are we not going to nursery?’ He is attached with his friends so it is difficult to explain what is coronavirus, and he is too little. And when I say locked down, he’s like, ‘Well, let’s open the lockdown then!’”

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“We go to the community centre for lunch every day… We have our sandwiches there because we can’t sit in the van anymore together, that used to be lovely to be honest. A day like today, to be able to sit in the van. During the summer it’s great, we have a picnic, lunch on the bench in the park, but in weather like this we’d normally sit in the van and warm up.”

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“When the first lockdown began, I was living in my truck. But the whole lockdown thing negated the usefulness of that so I moved into a house… It’s good, it’s surprising because I haven’t lived in a house for like 20 years but it’s really convenient. When I first moved in I’d go upstairs and leave my keys upstairs, then I’d come down and be like, ‘Oh no!’ and go all the way up again. In a van, everything’s just there.”

A man standing outside a mosque, wearing a beige waistcoat and a dark grey kurta. He wears a linen scarf loosely around his neck and a white turban on his head. He looks directly at the camera and smiles slightly.Behind him, the twisted decorative pillars of the Madina Masjid in S8.

I supervise all the activities that happen in this mosque, like education activities, and supervise those things which are needed in this community. If some young Muslims are taking part in gangs, we want to stop that, and start positive activity in the mosque.

We can’t invite many people in the mosque because we don’t have that much space for social distancing. This is the problem we are facing since lockdown started. And the big thing is that we are not doing any events now because of lockdown and many workers have lost their jobs. Our charity is also disturbed because if people don’t have anything, how can they give? All mosques are run on a donation basis. Our volunteer team is acting, and based on them, on their shoulders, we are working.

OUTSIDE CONVERSATIONS /

An elderly man and woman stand in front of a greenhouse, all bathed in sunshine. They are both smiling, and the man wears a small felt badge of his own white-bearded, bespectacled face and a green jumper, while the woman wears a teal and black cardigan with gold buttons and a swirling pattern; her blonde-white hair is cut in a pageboy style.

An elderly woman stands amongst tall saplings, a red brick wall visible behind her. Her long black hair flows over her shoulders. She wears a white sari with a black botanical pattern, and a black-and-beige argyle print cardigan over the top. She looks directly at the camera earnestly.

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“That one’s been there for a while, the purple one, the wisteria. There’s a hotel on the corner called The Wisteria – well, it’s not a hotel anymore, it used to be a hotel, and wisteria just flows down the walls. I sit out here a lot, I sunbathe out here… That’s my beach, got my sun tan. If the sun’s on it and I’m not at work I’ll sit there any time. So I sit out here and read a lot.”

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“Last year we were outside most of the time and I worked outside as well. All of my paperwork, I just do out here. In the afternoons we’ll always have chairs and a little table out and have food out here. It’s quieter than you think. I’ve planted strawberries and wild strawberries, and some pine berries which are like strawberries but white, and they taste like pineapple.”

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“I lived round here when I was a student as well, we really like it. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to anyone on this street yet but everyone is really friendly. Especially when the sun’s out, they are all out on the stairs chatting to each other. Everyone looks out for each other. We’ve only been living here two weeks and we already know half the street.”

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“We’re outside most days and we eat our meals out here, we had our lunch out here today. I’m growing tomatoes, courgettes, beans, rhubarb, cherries, potatoes, apples, gooseberries, damsons, soft fruit, red currants, blackcurrants, figs if we’re lucky.”

Half my room in the winter was just filled with little tiny plants and all of these tall plants were on my windowsill. She [my mum] grows them inside throughout winter. Every single year it’s the same cycle – it’s only September, October when there is nothing. She learnt it from Bangladesh but obviously here it’s a lot more difficult, when she came here she had to change everything, it’s a completely different climate.

She really likes the tall plants; they are her favourite. She gives some to the neighbours sometimes, everyone asks for them… It’s not common for people to grow them here, so that’s why.

A woman in a sherbet pink headscarf stands in dappled sunlight, smiling slightly at the camera. She holds two plants in her hand. She is inside, tending to her tomato plants.

All images and accompanying text © Lucy Marriott, ‘Inside/Out’, 2020-21.

2020-2021: JUDE’S LOCKDOWN DIARY

In March 2020, the PM announces to the UK: Stay at home. Save lives. Stay safe. I sat in a holiday cottage in Fife – panic set in. I must get back to Sheffield!

I was in Scotland visiting my son and family. After 9 years in Cambodia, they had returned home, and they chose Scotland to be near to my daughter-in-law’s family. This was now their home. Home was… where, for me? England, and more precisely for the 18 months prior, Sheffield.

I had visited Sheffield often since meeting the great love of my life here in my early twenties, a woman called Wendy. I had routinely continued to visit, even after Wendy sadly died 25 years ago; she’d been in our lives since my son was 2 years old. Sheffield had remained in my life since then, and I eventually moved here in 2018, transitioning from a rural place to an urban one – partly because I wanted to be able to walk into its small city centre. I wanted to walk to the independent cinema, to be near parks for my dogs, to integrate myself in the city’s friendly, diverse communities. I was finding my way.

But when lockdown began in March 2020, I found myself alone in the house with my dogs. I busied myself with collecting food for the much-needed food banks, and offering free online therapy to women trapped in flats and gardenless places nationwide. I worked remotely, supporting mental health support services in schools. Repeatedly, I reminded myself and others: At times of vulnerability, we walk towards the familiar.

Sheffield was not familiar. Nobody to put my fragments together – although within the haze of this new world, a woman in my street understood. Thank you, C. And another, A, whose capacity to notice, to know this pain and trust me to find my way, continues to serve me well. Yet very little was familiar, and at times of vulnerability we need the familiar. This sentence started as a faint echo and was becoming louder and louder. I began to realise I was finding it harder and harder to leave my house. I didn’t want to walk in the nearby parks, yet I yearned for nature and outdoor space. As everything shut down, what was left was a magnified sense of unfamiliarity. Unfamiliar people, their dogs, their lives, and everything had shut down. I was shutting down. No one really knew me here; there hadn’t been adequate time to create familiarity with others. Intimacy was absent. I loved my street, its sense of community, yet it had become a container that hemmed me in and trapped me. I needed to leave – just for a few months.

I continued my pursuit to open spaces, open spaces within me too. In January 2021 I moved to a cottage in the countryside. I sought respite from sitting in empty car parks sipping takeaway coffees. Sensory overload is being soothed. No more looking out at walls that seem to have become the sky. I’m sitting it out here in the countryside.

I miss my contributions to the street. I miss my neighbours. I’ve walked towards what is familiar, and I’ll return to Sheffield when I’m ready to find home there.

Jude submitted this piece in June 2021. She has since returned to her house in Sheffield.