Chapter 7:
Community Arts and Urban Heritage During the COVID-19 Lockdown: the Case of Urban Sketching
DOI: 10.54165/9789887928522/07
Rui Oliveira Lopes
With the COVID-19 global pandemic, several governments across the world instated curfews, quarantines and various other forms of social restrictions such as stay-at-home orders and lockdowns. These measures not only severely affected artists and culture professionals as arts and culture facilities were closed to the public, but they also impacted the link between the arts and the local communities.
Urban Sketchers (USk) is a movement engaging a global community of artists and amateurs who gather in local communities to practice drawing on location. As an international movement, its influence has spread across several countries and cities, contributing to formal and informal gatherings to capture the dialogues and interactions with the community and its relations with the community space.
This paper examines the notions of globality and locality in their relations to the artistic expressions in the physical and virtual space. It also reflects on the expanded field of community arts under the context of social restrictions.
To cite:
Lopes, Rui Oliveira, “Community arts and urban heritage during the COVID-19 lockdown: the case of urban sketching”. In Empower Arts, Animate Communities, edited by Benny Lim & Hing-kay Oscar Ho, 85-104. Hong Kong: Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2021. https://doi.org/10.54165/9789887928522/07
