COVID-19 disrupted our year. A month into the spring semester, ASU announced the university would move to an online teaching and learning environment to follow public health recommendations surrounding the outbreak and global spread of the novel coronavirus. Here at ASU’s Herberger Institute, we met the challenge not only of finding a way to teach design and arts online, but also of exploring how our skills could serve as assets to help people affected worldwide.
“Let’s keep reminding people that the first thing they did when they realized they were going to be stuck in their houses (other than buy toilet paper!) was to decide what TV they would watch, music they would listen to, what book they would read. They streamed operas, they visited virtual museums, they listened to concerts online. They watched videos of people in Italy singing out their windows. In short, they turned to artists. If anything demonstrates that the arts are essential, I think that does.”
As designers and artists, our faculty, staff, students, alumni and partners created work to speak to this moment, explored the importance of creativity during crisis, provided virtual design and art experiences for families, students and community organizations, worked behind the scenes on new solutions for personal protective equipment, pulled together resources for fellow creatives, freelance designers and independent artists facing financial hardships due to loss of work, and much more.
The following stories share how we faced COVID-19 with creativity.