The discussion aims to explore the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our communities in London and beyond as the issue has increasingly become one of the greatest challenges our communities have ever faced in recent history. We all agree that while the outbreak has pushed us all further apart from each other, in many ways, it has also brought us together as communities. Many of us are carrying out more and more acts of kindness to support people that something we wouldn’t have done before the crisis. We are now more likely to donate to a food bank more than before, volunteer for a charity or local group in need or set up a help group to organise shopping and medicine deliveries for those unable to go out due to being elderly, vulnerable or in self-isolation and definitely in touch with our immediate neighbours to talk and offer help when needed we previously had no relationship with. The support given to key workers as a whole society has been phenomenal. One newspaper headline put this ‘ Clap for our Carers: the very unBritish ritual that united the nation.’ Although all these have given us plenty of hope that we will come out of this crisis as a stronger and kinder society at the end, whether we will be able to continue this momentum once all is back to normal is a valid question we should be asking. We sincerely hope that the discussion helps us to answer this important question in some way.
