National Covid Memorial Wall

Reviewed By: Lini Radhakrishnan 

Review Date: March 14, 2025 

Site Link: https://www.nationalcovidmemorialwall.org/

Archive Link: https://archive.ph/WKvkj

Keywords: Contemporary, Fine Arts, Political Science, Activism and Advocacy, Memorials  

Data Sources:

• 240,000 hand-painted red hearts on the National Covid Memorial Wall in London, each heart representing a loss to COVID-19
  
• Virtual dedications submitted to the site
  
• Podcasts by the group “Friends of the Wall” talking to volunteers or bereaved individuals
  
• Dedication requests sent to the volunteer group through email or Facebook or Instagram

Processes:

• The Covid Memorial Wall is captured in an immersive virtual version through ‘Walk the Wall’
  
• The audio recordings of the podcasts are included as YouTube links

Presentation:

The Covid Memorial Wall is a living memorial to COVID-19 victims. The site offers a virtual view of the 500-meter long wall covered with hand-painted hearts and dedications. The landing page provides a gateway to almost all the features of the site including information about the wall, the team of volunteers, the way to request a dedication, the podcasts and a link to the virtual walk across the wall as well as to the virtual dedication page. There are two options in the navigation bar to a gallery of quotes and ways to support the project. 

Digital Tools Used:

• Tools are not disclosed. The site was probably built with volunteer participation using Javascript and Squarespace

Language:

• English

Review:

In 2021, bereaved families conceptualized the National Covid Memorial Wall in London as a visual tribute to the UK's pandemic fatalities. The 500-meter long wall is covered with around 240,000 hand-painted red hearts, each form personalized with messages representing a COVID-19 casualty. The hearts are a community creation, drawn either by visitors or volunteers honoring requests received through social media or email to memorialize loved ones lost to COVID-19. The wall is maintained by bereaved volunteers who formed a group called “The Friends of the Wall.” They repainted the fading hearts with long-lasting masonry paint and continued to add new hearts for those still dying from the virus. Visitors to the wall can add a heart to commemorate their own COVID-19 loss or request a dedication.

The project is a people-led memorial intended to aid collective grieving, remembrance, healing and hope grounded in activist beginnings. The losses to COVID-19 were sudden, robbing most families of the chance to say goodbye. The physical memorials and the virtual artifacts are maintained by the community of bereaved volunteers. The project is conceived as a living memorial as hearts continue to be inscribed on the wall. The hearts are standardized in design, distinguished by the written dedications within the forms. Every heart preserves memories and evokes a reaction from the audience.

The website features a virtual Walk the Wall,which is an immersive experience, although there is no zoom feature to view the details. The image of the wall is sandwiched between blurred views of the sidewalk and the landscape above, lending an illusion of movement. The experiential aspects are elevated by the integrated background sounds of conversations and blaring sirens. The scrolling action to walk the wall activates a heart count that is facilitated by image recognition software and the counter keeps tally of the painted forms. At intermittent moments during the scroll, the audio plays one of the thirteen recordings of volunteers describing their cathartic experience or bereaved individuals relating memories of their loved one’s final moments. The long virtual walk across the digitized structure conveys the enormity of the loss as the counter hits the final count of 150,815 (indicating the image is not updated) and the audio plays the last heartbreaking story. The team intends to capture more audio stories. The site also allows viewers to leave a virtual dedication,expanding the functionality of the wall beyond the physical structure.

The Covid Memorial Wall was a reaction to the mismanagement of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government leading to preventable losses. The four-person British political campaign group Led by Donkeys, along with Covid Bereaved Families for Justice UK founded by Jo Goodman and Matt Fowler, sprang into action on hearing Johnson’s plan to create a memorial (Friends of the Wall Podcast). Led by Donkeys initially concealed their role to avoid politicizing the project in any partisan manner. The project worked to ensure that the communities retained the power to tell their stories and did not permit the governing authorities to insensitively politicize the memorial.

The physical structure was chosen for its strategic location directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, serving as a constant reminder of the government’s monumental failure to manage the pandemic. The activist group and the volunteers took over the wall as their medium without official permission, defying the authorities. The project chose to avoid explicitly stating the political failings that led to the massive loss of lives. The communities stayed true to the primary objective of remembrance and granted families a space free from political trappings, but the clear implicit messaging was one that the people in authority cannot ignore.

How are the collaborative aspects reflected in the project?

The collective grieving is enabled by the collaborative efforts of the volunteers and bereaved families who have created and maintained the wall as well as the virtual environment, which extends the memorial’s reach through the ether to families across the globe.

Do you see an opportunity to collaborate that would be helpful to the project?

While the digital experience widens the reach of the project, the communal experience delivered by the physical artifact is diminished. More importantly, the resultant detachment from the object could pose a threat to conservation efforts. The relative ease of maintaining the digital project could weaken the resolve to preserve the memorial wall (Hiskes 2015), although the digital forms would most likely suffer the consequences of technological advances that would render the present platforms obsolete. As is the fate of most digital projects, the memorial could end up becoming inoperative.

Another avenue to keep the memorial relevant in the future would be to position the commemoration as an annual event so the existing community can formally submit anniversary dedications to their memorialized loved ones. The practice could become a family tradition that is passed down to the next generation. The intergenerational transfer could ensure the preservation of the virtual wall beyond the fate of the physical monument and may even help make a case for conservation of the structure.