Life in Lockdown: A narrative project exploring the lived experiences of students at the University of York during the first national lockdown

In Spring 2020, the University of York Students’ Union (YUSU) launched the ‘Life in Lockdown’ project, using personal narratives and storytelling to identify the complexities of students’ lived experiences during the first Covid-19 lockdown. Funded by the University of York via their access and participation plan (APP), the project aimed to engage particularly with students identifying as BAME, working class and/or disabled. Once all the students’ stories had been collected, YUSU used remaining funding to hire three PhD students to support the analysis. Of the 103 students who signed up for the project, 43 shared their experiences using a range of mediums, including written narratives, combinations of text and images, artwork, photovoice and personalised video stories. The research aimed to understand the impact of lockdown on students’ everyday lives, their experiences of learning and teaching, and their sense of identity within much altered living and learning environments. This research was done with a view to shining a light on unseen struggles, challenges and experiences - particularly for BAME, working class and disabled students - and also to inform and improve future approaches to student engagement, learning and teaching and access and participation. Throughout the course of the project, we also became increasingly aware of the implications - for future research and practice - of using narrative methods to explore students’ lives.