Public symbolism meets private reflection: writer and urban
explorer James Attlee reads the signs that appeared in windows and hears
from artists, activists, frontline workers and more. As
the country entered lockdown in the spring of 2020, images and signs
proliferated in windows, symptoms of the human desire to communicate as
face-to-face contact became impossible. When restrictions temporarily
eased, writer James Attlee began ringing doorbells in his hometown of
Oxford. On doorsteps and park benches, on council estates and among
genteel terraces, he recorded the voices of those briefly emerging from
isolation. He won the trust of rainbow painters and anti-vaxxers, a
Covid nurse, an LGBTQ+ artist, a VE Day celebrator and Black Lives
Matter protesters, as well as frontline workers in a bakery and a
supermarket. Their words, Attlee’s pithy observations and 16 pages of
his photographs make Under the Rainbow a unique record of an
extraordinary year and a tribute to creativity and resilience.