Creative Contemporary Arts Programming in the Literary Heritage Sector amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic: Before, during..., and after?

Lockdowns and furloughs brought with them a burgeoning demand for quality digital content, felt strongly across the culture, heritage, and arts sectors. One consequence of this was an upsurge in the public’s appetite for reading – especially for reading longer, more demanding literature – which was widely discussed in the press, and which bucked the trend for digital content by favouring print-based reading. These two tendencies came together and fused in creative and unexpected ways in the literary heritage sector, which responded to the need to make English Literature more accessible to the public at a time when it was never more in demand. Many literary heritage sites rose to this challenge by embracing contemporary art in order to develop new methods and media that enabled their cultural activities to flourish in spite of stringent restrictions. This chapter explores how interventions in heritage programming at two literary heritage sites – Shandy Hall and Abbotsford – took analogue and digital forms, respectively. Here we explore the ways in which artists and heritage practitioners pooled their resourcefulness to enhance the resilience of the UK literary house sector during the Covid-19 pandemic. We also consider how lessons learned from this crisis have helped broaden the reach of literary heritage sites, enriched their offer, and boosted their impact.