Back Chat: A zine created with children aged 11-12 about their lives during the coronavirus pandemic and the period after, told though their images and words

‘Back Chat’ is a zine that was created with children aged 11-12 about their lives during the coronavirus pandemic and the period after, told though their images and words. Funded by the British Academy (grant number: SRG2021\211308), this project was created by Helen Lomax and Kate Smith and has been researching with children to document their experiences about the impact of the pandemic on their lives through collaborative, socially-distanced arts-based methods. Back Chat follows earlier research - Corona Chronicles (http://blogs.hud.ac.uk/hudcres/20-21/oct/corona-chronicles/) - Children researching their everyday lives, education and relationships during the coronavirus global pandemic (Lomax, Smith and Percy-Smith, 2022; Lomax and Smith, 2022; Lomax, Smith et al, 2020) – which was carried out at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 with some of the same children who chronicled life in early national lockdowns and school re-openings - please see the children’s animation ‘Our Voices’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-tOFAL-nwU).

Through Back Chat, we make available a unique resource for childhood researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to see and hear directly from children which foregrounds children’s expertise in visual outputs and includes key messages from children to policy makers, educators and other children.