The OU in Milton Keynes helps develop project to capture social impact of coronavirus

The Open University in partnership with The Young Foundation has launched a landmark project to understand how this generation-defining moment is impacting the future of community life and wellbeing.

People of all ages are being invited to share their day-to-day experiences during the pandemic via an online platform over the next three months.

The project - COVID-19 and Me - has just been launched by The Young Foundation in partnership with the OU and is being hosted on the organisation’s bespoke nQuire platform.

And anyone in the UK, aged over 18, is being asked to sign up as citizen scientists to share their day-to-day, real-time experience of the pandemic with a team of social researchers.

Helen Goulden, CEO of The Young Foundation, said: “We are in unprecedented times and this research will be critical to our understanding of how the Covid-19 pandemic is fundamentally and dynamically changing all of our lives.

"For the first time in history, the lived experience of a viral pandemic in communities will be documented and captured for future generations. The resulting research will form an important digital archive of how the communities responded to this generation-defining moment in time. This could be the biggest social citizen project ever in the UK."

Professor Anne Adams, professor of engaged practice and research at The Open University, said: “Within this current Covid-19 crisis it is important to gain as much insight to help us combat problems both for this emergency and for our future needs.

"A critical part of this understanding is the important experiences of people across the country. It is far too easy for decisions to be made based upon numbers without a nuanced understanding of how important different issues are to everyday people, across the country.”

To sign-up to the study, potential participants are asked to register with The Young Foundation directly via [email protected].