Nottingham museum encourages mindful moments

The National Justice Museum (NJM) in Nottingham is sharing moments of hope, connection and constraint through letters documenting the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. When NJM’s Constraint/Restraint exhibition was forced to close in March 2020, Letters of Constraint was launched, inviting people to write a reflective letter about the lockdown experience. The shared words offer a glimpse of mass societal constraint, told through individual stories of isolation. People were encouraged to spend a mindful moment writing about their experiences of lockdown, recording everyday feelings and observations. The typed and handwritten letters document different perspectives, magnifying hope, hopelessness, inequality, resilience, and vulnerability. Working with NJM writer in residence Dr Martin Glynn and V21 Artspace, the letters have also been shaped into a digital book and added to the ‘Constraint Restraint’ virtual exhibition.