The Covid Classroom: reimagining our spaces

As the wave of Coronavirus broke across the globe all our lives were tossed about in the churning foam. Many aspects of our daily routines were suddenly unrecognizable. Supermarket shelves were empty, restrictions on movement were in place and schools began to close. It was the school closures and the shift to remote learning that I felt compelled to document. I wanted to see how families coped in the new learning paradigm, how they reimagined their living spaces. I was intrigued by how people adapted on the run and repurposed their existing furniture when stores had so quickly been stripped of desks, chairs and other helpful learning tools. It was of particular interest to see how the kids coped as face-to-face learning among their friends gave way to screens on camp tables in their bedrooms. How would they adapt and what would be the lasting impact? I felt the fish-eye lens helped to capture the hyper-real atmosphere of the time. As children moved from classrooms to living rooms, kitchens, laundries and studies their individual learning spaces may have grown just as the world in which they could move freely was shrinking by the day.