Watch all seven short films
London on Lockdown is a creative record of the first-hand experiences of Londoners experiencing or at risk of homelessness during COVID-19.
In April 2020, our Artistic Director Adrian Jackson began working with a group of Cardboard Citizens Members (people with experience of or at risk of homelessness) on Zoom to read Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year together, partly as a way of reflecting on and documenting our lives through the COVID-19 year we are experiencing. Defoe’s text is a semi-journalistic, semi-novelistic account of the mid-17th century plague, published in 1722, which contains highly prescient parallels with our contemporary context.
Participants were encouraged to document and share their own ‘Journals of the COVID-19 year’ through writing and videos. We have now produced six short films which document the diverse stories of our Members during COVID-19.
