Dr Stephanie Snow, NHS at 70 lead, and her team at the University have collected over 200 COVID-19 related voice clips since March 2020. This project, dubbed “NHS Voices of COVID-19”, includes clips recorded by patients, policymakers, frontline NHS staff, young people and people with high-risk conditions.

The COVID-19 history project has now received a grant of nearly £1million from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This will enable the project to join forces with the British Library’s oral history department and form a permanent public resource to help inform policy and practice. The funding will help deliver an additional 900 interviews which will add to the British Libraries wider COVID-19 collection initiative.

Dr Snow said: “We are thrilled to have received AHRC funding. By building on the partnerships we’ve built through NHS at 70 we will have a unique opportunity to capture the unfolding of this global pandemic and document how it has impacted our lives and communities across the UK.”

Short snippets of the clips can be heard on the NHS at 70 website.