Creative Lockdown? A Daily Diary Study of Creative Activity During Pandemics

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is influencing our lives in an enormous and unprecedented way. Here, we explore COVID-19-lockdown's consequences for creative activity. To this end, we relied on two extensive diary studies. The first, held on March 2019 (pre-pandemic), involved 78 students who reported their emotions and creativity over 2 weeks (927 observations). The second, conducted on March 2020 (during the pandemic and lockdown), involved 235 students who reported on their emotions, creativity, and the intensity of thinking and talking about COVID-19 over a month (5,904 observations). We found that compared with 2019, during the lockdown, students engaged slightly yet statistically significantly more in creative activities. An analysis of diaries collected during the pandemic also showed that the days when students spent more time discussing or searching for information about COVID-19 were characterized by a higher creative activity yet also mixed emotions. We discuss potential explanations of these unexpected results along with future study directions.

The Role of Artistic Creative Activities in Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia

“…This has included commonplace activities such as baking (Easterbrook-Smith, 2020) and watching films (Mikos, 2020), as well as new and emerging forms of artistic engagement such as singing in online choirs or from balconies (Taylor, 2020; see also www.musicacrossthebalconies.com) and visiting online art galleries (Shehadi, 2020). Creative and artistic activities have served a range of purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic in a variety of cultural contexts, such as health promotion, improving environmental aesthetics and memorializing (de-Graft Aikins, 2020), awareness-raising about the threats posed by the pandemic (Blanc et al, 2020), and emotion regulation (Karwowski et al, 2021). And, while musical activities can serve a range of purposes such as self-expression and social group bonding (Vanstone et al, 2016), musical activities have also facilitated emotion regulation during the pandemic (Martín et al, 2021;Steinberg et al, 2021).…”

Creativity, Boredom Proneness and Well-Being in the Pandemic

“…Some research has examined the influence of lockdown measures on creativity, finding that everyday creativity increased, particularly amongst those with a lower baseline of creative activity [28]. Among students, one study showed a slight increase in creative activity during the pandemic [29]. This study also showed that higher levels of creativity were associated with increased levels of reported positive affect.…”

Rapid Evidence Review of Community Engagement and Resources in the UK during the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Can Community Assets Redress Health Inequities?

“…The Crafts Council noted in its annual report the meditative benefits and increase in craft making during the pandemic [ 52 ]. Meanwhile, those with established psychiatric disorders, learning disabilities, neurodevelopmental conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or ongoing treatment for conditions such as eating disorders experienced a severe reduction in access to points of statutory contact [ 53 , 54 , 55 ]. Services designed to implement salutogenic approaches in the community were reported to be overstretched during the pandemic, having been fragile and at capacity beforehand [ 56 , 57 ].…”