Creating Connections during COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Our research group created a public communication strategy of expressive writing, to use within our research center over the Massachusetts COVID-19 stay at home advisories. Our goals were to 1) build community, 2) recognize the unique experiences, needs, concerns and coping strategies of our colleagues, and 3) create a mechanism to creatively share those experiences. We conceptualized a weekly e-newsletter, “Creativity in the Time of COVID-19,” a collective effort for expressing and documenting the extraordinary, lived experiences of our colleagues during this unique time of a coronavirus pandemic. Through 23 online issues, we have captured 72 colleagues’ perspectives on social isolation, the challenges of working from home, and hope in finding connection through virtual platforms. We have organized the themes of these submissions, in the forms of photos, essays, poetry, original artwork, and more, according to three components of the Social Connection Framework: structural, functional and quality approaches to creating social connectedness.

Acknowledgments

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Government. Our project was funded through VA Health Services Research and Development CIN 13-403. We thank the many members of the VA Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research for their submissions to Creativity in the Time of COVID-19. Our essay, and our newsletter, would not have been possible without their contributions. Permission has been granted from contributors for all quotes used from Creativity in the Time of COVID-19 submissions, as well as for the photos and contributions displayed in Figures 2–9.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was funded through VA Health Services Research and Development [CIN 13-403].