Report from Melbourne: Urban sketching in the age of COVID-19

[Guest post by Richard Aitken in Melbourne,
Australia]
 Plato—I think it was—likened
Mediterranean civilisations of the ancient and classical world to ‘frogs around
a pond’. Today, despite many shared borders, southern Europe still looks out
over the rim, nations linked in popular imagination by the powerful sway of the
sea. From an Australian perspective, as an island continent where land is the
defining factor, the seas almost look in on us, our beaches forming a kind of
national front garden.

During recent days and weeks, I have been
pondering the geo-political dimensions of nations and their differing responses
to the coronavirus pandemic.

A few days ago, I was rung out of the blue
by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, our highly valued national
broadcaster, and found myself facing a veritable curveball (hello America) /
curler (hello Europe) / googly (hello England). As a garden historian, ‘did I
see any parallels between current responses to COVID-19 and approaches to
gardening during the two world wars?

Now, to be fair, I love this sort of
question, since it charges my interest in history with contemporary relevance.
From an Australian perspective, both world wars were largely fought on foreign
soil but our frontline during this pandemic is actually here. It’s in
Australia. (You can see
my full response
.) Despite
occasional waffle at top levels, ‘social distancing’ and ‘self isolation’ are
the new mode, and it is not hard to join the dots from the experience of others
to see that ‘total lockdown’ will soon enter our lives and lexicon.

One point I made to the ABC—but which space
precluded from inclusion in the reporter’s post—was that world wars were
fertile times for introspection. Like Urban Sketchers worldwide, our official
sketching activities have been halted, but the home front provides many
opportunities. I have, for example, been inspired by the posts on the USk
Portugal website, where a series of set tasks has been producing some
extraordinary moments of humanity amidst the crisis. Such introspection will
undoubtedly move on from the mundane to dreaming about how this crisis might
reshape our future. As sketchers we can play a role not only in documenting but
also in drawing inspiration from the past and present to take into the future.

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