The ICCM Journal | Summer 2022 | V90 No. 2
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the national covid memorial wall Julie Dunk visits the moving national memorial on London's South Bank.
On a recent visit to London, I took the opportunity to visit the National Covid Memorial Wall on the South Bank, opposite the Houses of Parliament. I had seen press articles about the wall, so knew of its existence. But nothing had quite prepared me for the sheer scale of the memorial, nor the heart-rending stories it tells. As you approach the wall, you are aware of a sea of red and pink. As you get closer, that sea resolves into individual hearts of various sizes and hues. Each heart represents a person who has died with Covid-19 on their death certificate; each heart represents a wave of grief. The memorial stretches for over a third of a mile, and is right outside St Thomas’ Hospital. There are over 180,000 hearts, representing the estimated number of people who have died of Covid during the pandemic. Each heart is hand painted, and is therefore unique, just like the people the hearts represent. The memorial wall was started in March 2021 by the campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families, assisted by fellow campaign group Led by Donkeys. The Covid-19 Bereaved Families group was founded by Matt Fowler and Jo Goodman, who both lost their fathers to Covid during the pandemic. They became concerned that the deaths of people due to Covid were just becoming statistics, reported blankly without any acknowledgment of the humanity behind the figures. Jo Goodman stated in a Guardian interview ‘they say grief is love with nowhere to go – the wall is where it goes’. Despite the threat of arrest for criminal damage, and a potential £10k fine, volunteers from the campaign groups started to draw the hearts on the wall on 29th March 2021.
