About Us

In the spring of 2020, our team of Washington University in St. Louis undergraduate and medical students created Grounded: The Pandemic Archive. This digital time capsule, which combines images and audio recordings, serves as a living archive of how people have experienced COVID-19. It captures the meanings that emerged from the spaces we inhabited and objects that surrounded us.

Our Story

At the end of 2020, we received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to build this project out from 2021 through 2024. We are working to apply what we learned from the first iteration of Grounded to make this project more community-centered. Our goal is to explore how individuals—particularly those hardest hit by the pandemic—are using creative outlets to resist injustice, foster healing, challenge systemic discrimination, and cope with COVID-19. We are working to imagine a more just future through different storytelling tools and tactics. COVID-19 has called attention to the vast disparities in our society, specifically how minority populations have been disproportionately affected by this pandemic. The power of Black Lives Matter, the outrage over separation of immigrant and refugee families, and the harsh toll on racial and economic minorities, front-line workers, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ and elderly communities all illustrate the importance of listening to the people whose lives have been most impacted; their creative practices illuminate new paths toward social justice.

Without documentation, these crucial—but ephemeral—stories where art intersects with lived experiences of pandemic and political resistance will likely be lost. Black and Brown voices are often eliminated from dominant narratives due to exclusionary revisions of the past. We are working to construct an inclusive legacy and collective memory of these historic times and center communities' stories through our future work with Grounded: The Pandemic Archive. Recognizing and understanding experiences of the pandemic will remain vital for years to come as we slowly process and seek to remedy the structural inequalities underscored by COVID-19. If you are interested in participating or getting involved, please contact us.

Thank you to Rachael Silberstein and Graham Taylor for helping create the illustrations and film, respectively, for our project. We are very grateful for your talents and contributions!