Collecting COVID-19: The McLean County Experience

All of us are making history every day as we experience current events, and it is important that we value those experiences enough to document them for the future. With that goal in mind, the Museum initiated the COVID-19: The McLean County Experience* with the purpose of hearing from area residents, just like you, and preserving local experiences of the pandemic.

COVID-19: The McLean County Experience

We invite you to document and share your experiences in any of the following ways:

1. Respond directly through Google Forms to a series of thought-provoking questions relevant to the pandemic, with written responses, photographs, videos, poetry and/or art

2. Document your experience privately. Refer to our guide for journaling your COVID-19 experience to help you get started. If you choose to share your journal with the Museum, please send pictures or files to mcmhcovid19@gmail.com

3. Younger project participants can document their experiences using this time capsule journal courtesy of Long Creations. If you choose to share the time capsule with the Museum, please send pictures to mcmhcovid19@gmail.com

4. Respond by Google Form to questions specifically developed to document the unique experiences of groups who have been impacted by the pandemic in different ways. We will continue to add to this list, so please check back!

   • Teachers

   • Medical workers

   • Essential workers

   • Students of all ages

   • Individuals no longer working because of the pandemic

   • Local businesses, retailers, restaurants, and nonprofits impacted by sheltering in place

   • Professionals working remotely 

   • Individuals who have had COVID-19 (or believe they did) and recovered

Personal Reflection Questions

1. How has the pandemic affected your home life (for good and bad) and how do you feel about this?

2. How has the pandemic affected your work/job and how do you feel about this?

3. What are the challenges you are facing as a result of the pandemic? How do you feel about these challenges?

4. What activities are you doing to keep yourself and others in your household busy while sheltering in place? Describe how your daily life has changed or stayed the same?

5. Describe activities are you doing outside and what you see or hear while outside. How do you feel about what you see or hear?

6. What activities or special events are you unable to participate in because of sheltering in place? and what are you doing instead?

7. What is your experience when you go out to get needed supplies? Where do you go and what do you see/experience as you are out and about?

8. Did you get tested for COVID-19? If not, why? If so, what was that experience like?

9. What news are you reading/viewing about the pandemic and how do you feel about this news?

10. Has weathering this crisis made you more or less optimistic about the future? What do you think the situation will be like in four weeks, three months, a year from now?

11. What, if any, experience of illness occurred in your family while sheltering in place? How did you react? How/was the illness resolved?

12. If you were to curate an exhibit about your feelings and experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic right now, what objects in your home would you use and why?

13. What are you learning about yourself, your family, your community during this crisis?

14. How do you think local, state, and/or national leaders are handling the situation?