Care Aesthetics, Coronavirus and Everyday Life

The article outlines the concept of care aesthetics and then uses it to examine different responses to the coronavirus pandemic. The ambition is to provide a language and approach to everyday community-based practices that values them as caring and artistic, without necessarily determining whether they are first and foremost one or the other. The article outlines the origins of care aesthetics as a response to the field of feminist care ethics and then examines how it links to theories of the everyday and everyday aesthetics. Community responses to the pandemic are examined through this lens, to reveal the blurred boundaries between acts of care and arts-led programmes. Examples of community cooking, theatre companies transforming their venues and community arts interventions are discussed to demonstrate how attention to the sensory practices of caring solidarity might be enhanced.