I am setting up the Covid Disability Archive to preserve the disabled experience of Covid. At a time where we have been dismissed, forgotten and ignored, while also suffering extremely high casualties, it is vital we don't allow our stories to be left behind. There is a real lack of true disabled voices in history, with our stories being told by primarily non-disabled people and with a heavy dose of inspiration porn. I want people to submit everything to the archive, the mundane and the incredible, the months long project and the day to day realities. In the form of memorials, videos, photos, art, social media posts, documents, screenshots, pictures, writing, podcasts anything! Impressive is brilliant, mundane is amazing, and all and any of it is welcome to be submitted to the archive if it was part of a disabled/chronically ill/neurodiverse person's Covid experience. I am asking people to submit via email until I get the website running with a submission page, and the archive will be fully accessible to current and future researchers online, on the same website. It will be organised and catalogued like a traditional archive by topic, type of submission and date, but be available digitally for viewing. The Covid Disability Archive opened for submissions from anywhere in the world in September, and this is the only project of its type in the world that I can find.

What our grantee is saying: "I am so delighted to be awarded this grant to safeguard the historical record of our pandemic, that if I hadn't been in bed when I got the news I would have fallen over. Not only will it showcase the breadth and depth of our experiences to the world, it will be an extensive and detailed source of history for all those people who will be researching Covid-19 as part of the inevitable "study of 2020" classes."