ABSTRACT
This case study is influenced by personal and emotional experiences from the pandemic situation, which to a large extent influences the authors' interpretive strategies. When analysing data from primary documents, we repeatedly asked the basic question: What did people experience during the first COVID-19 lockdown? We found ourselves in social isolation, the nature and consequences of which we could hardly imagine. Public authorities, schools, museums and galleries were closed; individuals and families withdrew from social space. Our in situ research activities that we planned to hold at a museum remained just a plan. The situation forced us to reformulate not only the project objectives, but also the means. We looked for opportunities to simulate a visit into an exhibition using digital technologies, an educational programme and ways of turning the virtual setting back into social action. In parallel, we were looking for opportunities to overcome social isolation and fear and guide nuclear social units towards empathy and solidarity. We investigated the possibilities of communication and were interested in processes that would help us propose such educational models stimulating art-and-dialogue-based learning, creativity and collaboration. Does the artist have a role to play whatsoever in this process? In conjunction with the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, we proposed and tested an educational programme consisting of a virtual viewing of an exhibition of art glass and related activities, communication with the participants and documenting their activity. The idea of the assignment was simple: if we can't go to a closed museum, let´s make our own museum at home. When we can't go art-making at a museum studio, we'll do it at home and all together. We sent an e-mail to friends and acquaintances asking them to do several activities that everyone could do, regardless of age.
The result was in a series of creative family events and subsequent thematic analyses that are evidenced through an evidence-based scenario and the production of a video: https://youtu.be/O5bN83_DJgU.
