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The Museum of London has curated a collection of lockdown tweets

You can now explore the pandemic’s digital history thanks to Twitter and the Museum of London

The Museum of London says that humour and sarcasm have always been an inherent characteristic of Londoners

The Museum of London is continuing to expand its Coronavirus collection, with the acquisition of 13 tweets posted by London during England’s first national lockdown.

The tweets – all of which were liked and retweeted at least 30,000 times during lockdown – will be used for a new exhibition Going Viral - a strand of the ongoing ‘Collecting COVID’ project.

Collecting Covid was created to allow future generations to see the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on our lives and allows us to reflect on a tumultuous period in our recent history. Within that, Going Viral was set up in April 2020 with the intention of showing how social media platforms could be used to tackle loneliness.


Credit: Will Jennings

"Humour and sarcasm have always been an inherent characteristic of Londoners, but especially employed as coping mechanisms throughout history in times of crisis and hardship,” said Foteini Aravani, digital curator at the Museum of London.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been no different with imagination, creativity and wit uniting us in never before seen ways while we’re physically separated by social distancing measures.”

The tweets collected are being displayed in the Museum’s permanent London Collection.

Each post in the collection expresses a different perspective on pandemic life. Whether that be humour to keep spirits up or ways of seeing loved ones, they all highlight ways that life was dramatically changed.


Credit: BARRY

Alongside Going Viral, the Museum of London has also launched Guardians of Sleep - a new project aiming to chronicle the subconscious by asking people to describe their night-time visions and experiences during the year of the pandemic.

The Museum of London also recently made the headlines with its recent acquisition of the famous giant orange effigy of former US President Donald Trump known as the Trump Baby.