Share your story
Submit your story here.
Diaries, journals, oral histories, images, recordings, and similar materials are an important part of documenting history. They provide depth and context for what an event or era was like for the real people experiencing it. Gathering this kind of information about the COVID-19 pandemic in the Chicago area will be important for people to understand and learn about this period of our history.
We invite you to contribute any digital records that document your experience and that of the Chicago community during the COVID-19 pandemic. These could include digital journal entries, audio/video recordings, an image, or an email. You can use phone cameras or software to create audio and video recordings, or you can create journal entries in Google and Word documents, text files, PDFs, etc. To contribute a physical item, please use our donation inquiry form.
Tips for Capturing Your Experience
As a starting point, try writing between 250 to 500 words, or if you are recording your thoughts, between 30 seconds and 3 minutes of sound/video recording.
- Tell us about yourself and what do you do (age range, work/school, neighborhood/community/organization, family/household)?
- How has your life changed?
- What activities are you doing now that you didn’t do before the pandemic?
- Are there any pandemic-related signs (e.g., business closure, delivery, etc.) up in your area?
- Are there deserted spaces, or other places that look and feel very different now?
- How have communities that you are involved in changed their practices?
- How are you staying connected to friends and family?
- What are things you don’t miss?
- Is there anything you will miss when stay-at-home orders lift?
- What are the moments you won’t forget?
- What new habits or ways of doing things have developed in the last few weeks? Will you keep any of these after the pandemic?
- How have your friends and loved ones been affected?
- How do you think you, your family, or our city will be impacted in the future?