Hello friends,
152,837 individually hand-painted hearts.
10,000 paint pens.
460 metres of stone wall.
1,500 volunteers.
10 days of installation in every weather from snow to blazing sunshine.
Most of the time when we do stuff you’ll soon see it on social media or in the newspapers or on TV. But sometimes when we’re working on a project, we don’t tell anyone what we’re up to.
One such project was the National Covid Memorial Wall.
We haven’t talked about it publicly until this week, but the ‘wall of hearts’ was a collaboration between us and the inspiring Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group.
You’ve probably seen it in the media. Hearts cover half a kilometre of stone wall on the tree-lined Albert Embankment, facing the Houses of Parliament. It’s an outpouring of love and grief that records every single life lost to Covid in the UK. Every heart on the memorial wall was painted by volunteers, many of whom had lost family or friends to the virus. Working every day in every kind of weather, clutching paint pens, together we slowly worked our way down the wall until - ten days later - the last heart was drawn.
Working with the families group, it was back in January that we conceived the idea of a people-led memorial to those we’ve lost, one that would face Parliament as a permanent reminder to politicians of all stripes that the UK’s colossal death toll is so much more than just a statistic. That staggering number represents a wave of incredible grief that has touched every part of the country, but is also a cry for accountability and justice.
After rising public pressure on Boris Johnson to visit the memorial, he eventually went on 28th April, under cover of darkness in a cowardly bid to avoid meeting the families. A few days later in the Commons he said “like many others across the Chamber, I was deeply moved when I visited the Covid Memorial Wall opposite Parliament”. In the same speech he finally agreed to the inquiry the families were pressing for, though predictably he’s now doing all he can to delay it.
We really hope that you manage to make it to the wall itself and find time to walk its length and reflect on what we as a nation have lost. For those who can’t, we’ve built a website to host the 460m long wall, it’s at
nationalcovidmemorialwall.org. You can scroll along it while listening to the stories of the families who painted it. Please consider plugging in your headphones and giving it some time.
Finally, we really want to thank those of you who continue to support Led By Donkeys. We spent a huge amount of our time - and your generous campaign contributions - on the memorial wall. We bought 10,000 high-end art pens (Posca 8Ks if you’re interested), masonry paint, scrubbing brushes, signs, lanterns, flowers, hi-vis vests and facemasks to ensure that the 1,500 volunteers involved were as safe and secure as possible. It was an epic undertaking and we couldn’t be more proud of creating a space for both grief and accountability.
Those of you who
contribute to LBD helped make this happen. We hope you also feel proud about being part of it,
LBDx