Which objects and memories should be preserved in a York Castle Museum to represent the Covid-19 pandemic for future generations?
That’s the question curators are now wrestling with – and they’d love your help.
Five of the most popular objects, voted for by the public, will be acquired by the museum to help document the pandemic to future generations.
If you’d like to be involved, the first chance to have a say is by taking part in an online survey, which can be found here.
Helen Thornton, curator of social history at York Museums Trust, said: “This pandemic has affected so many of us in many different ways.
“Everyone has had different experiences and we felt it was important to ask the public how they would like us to represent these times in our museum collections.
“We hope people will get involved and help us choose the new items to ensure they give real insight into the lives of people in and around York during the pandemic.”
Social media poll
Helen added: “This is the first time we’ve used social media as a tool for acquiring objects into the collection, but since being closed we’ve grown our online audience significantly and are excited to see how it will work on these platforms.
“It’s been an historical period, and we hope this collecting project will help future generations understand and learn about these challenging times.”
To decide which key objects should be taken into the permanent collection, York Castle Museum are asking members of the public to fill out the short online survey.
Then these will be put out to a poll on social media.
The top five objects will be added into York Castle Museum’s permanent collection.
As well as physical objects, the museum is also keen to hear people’s thoughts and reflections and how people managed to stay creative during the difficult year.