The iconic and official memorial to our UK Covid dead, The National Covid Memorial Wall is 500 metres of individually hand-painted red hearts; run by bereaved volunteers, the Friends of the Wall, since Summer 2021. It has more than 240,000 individually hand-painted red hearts, and is more than 500 metres long. The Wall is maintained by a small group of volunteers from the National Covid Memorial Wall charity, who paint hearts, remove graffiti, restore fading dedications, and hold memorial events. We are also working with relevant stakeholders for the Wall to be made a permanent memorial to honour our UK Covid dead. The National Covid Memorial Wall has become an iconic global symbol of the UK's catastrophic loss of life to Covid-19. All our work is funded purely by donation. To suppprt our work, please donate through our Crowdfunder:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/the-upkeep-of-the-national-covid-memorial-wall
The rules of the Wall are very straightforward:
• All hearts are red, in keeping with the original ethos of the Wall
• One heart for each life lost to Covid-19 in the UK – i.e. one heart per person
• All hearts should be similar in size – no loss is greater than any other
The National Covid Memorial Wall is specifically for the people who have died from Covid-19 in the UK - while we regret and respect all lives lost for other reasons due to the pandemic, these deaths are acknowledged by the 'Remember Me' memorial portico at St. Paul's Cathedral. If you have lost someone to Covid-19 in the UK, and would like a dedication added for your loved one, please contact us either by email or direct message. We would be honoured to write your dedication on your behalf and will send a photo and panel location once complete. Alternatively, if you are in London, you can write a dedication yourself. Bring a fine-nibbed permanent marker with you (we use black Sharpie pens) and choose one of the blank, bright red hearts to write your dedication in. Every panel is numbered in the centre, at the top, opposite the lampposts, so make a note of the number of the panel where you have chosen a heart. We recommend photographing the heart too. We mentally divide each panel into four quarters: A, B, C & D - the top left quarter of the panel being A, the top right is B, bottom left is C, and bottom right is D. This gives us a more specific location for each dedication. For example, a heart in the top right quarter of panel 11 would be recorded in our database as at 11B. In addition to the physical Wall, we also have an online dedication website, where you can add a virtual dedication to the person who died along with a photo - you can find this here: https://nationalcovidmemorialwall.dedicationpage.org/
The National Covid Memorial Wall is a registered charity with the Charity Commission of England and Wales, Charity No: 1213668
