Islanders asked to share coronavirus pandemic memories with Jersey Heritage

  • ITV Channel TV share their story of the coronavirus pandemic from a journalist and crew's perspective

For many, the words coronavirus pandemic may feel like a distant memory but archivists in Jersey are hoping to keep the island's story alive, through oral testimonies.

Jersey Heritage is asking people to come forward to share their memories from the Covid-19 pandemic, so that they can be recorded to allow future generations to understand how it really felt to go into lockdown, and the impact the pandemic had on Jersey as a community.

This resource will be carefully stored at the Archive with other digital records that help to tell the different chapters of Jersey’s story.

Stuart Nicolle, Jersey Heritage’s Senior Archivist, said: ““By recording these memories, we will be creating an oral history resource for future generations, who will be able to appreciate what Islanders went through during this turbulent time.

Everyone had different issues to deal with when Covid-19 hit the community and our aim is to capture a variety of experiences of this time, whether we’re speaking to a health care professional, someone who had to home school their children, a family who needed to protect a vulnerable relative or any other experience of the lockdown in Jersey.”

Former ITV journalist, Iselin Jones, shares her memories with Jersey Archive on what it was like to report on the coronavirus pandemic. Credit: ITV Channel TV

The oral history interviews are in addition to a Jersey Heritage project that began shortly after lockdown in 2020 called ‘Documenting Coronavirus (Covid-19)’, which recognised that the pandemic would have lasting implications for Jersey as a community.

Following a public appeal, a number of documents and objects relating to the pandemic were collected for the Archive, in addition to official documents from the Government of Jersey.

The oral history project is open to Islanders of all ages. Anyone interested in taking part can get in touch with the Jersey Archive team by calling 833300 or emailing archives@jerseyheritage.org.