Mapping Relational Intensities and Care in the COVID-19 Pandemic Home: Understanding Carers’ Practices Through Cultural Probes

Abstract

This article explores the complex emotional geography of contemporary domestic spaces and invisible forms of care during periods of working and caring from home (WCFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions carers and creatives were disproportionally impacted. In June 2020 we developed an open call for creative responses under the title of ‘Work, Care and Creativity Study (WCCS): value and visibility’. Our study sought to explore the lived experiences of creatives working at a university who were also carers WCFH and to capture the complexity of care responsibilities, their affects and effects on wellbeing, mental health and career disruptions. Through cultural probes our study sought to render visible some of the overlooked emotions, perceptions and practices that were emerging for carers during the pandemic. We were interested in how playful approaches to cultural probes could invite creative workers and carers to ‘map’ the materialities of the home as a way of expressing the relational, emotional, and material entanglements of WCFH. Our research illustrates the value of creative prompt techniques for articulating the constant (re)negotiation of the relational intensities and compressions of work, care and creativity at a time of COVID-19.