The Covid Yearbook Project

Stories and unedited school yearbooks from the masked & hybrid school years (2019-2022)

The COVID Yearbook Project is a collective archive and art installation documenting how school changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using original, unedited yearbooks alongside first-person stories, the project preserves a moment in childhood and education that is already beginning to fade from public memory.

How To Participate

About The Project

The COVID Yearbook Project collects two forms of material from the pandemic school years: written personal stories and physical school yearbooks created during periods of masking, remote learning, and hybrid instruction.

Yearbooks are typically private keepsakes. During COVID, they became unintended historical records — documenting absence, adaptation, and institutional change. When viewed collectively, they reveal a shared experience that cannot be seen in isolation.

This project presents yearbooks unaltered, preserving names, photographs, and layouts as originally printed. Personal stories are presented alongside these artifacts to provide emotional context without revision or reinterpretation.

The intention of the project is preservation, not commentary.

  • MAIL A YEARBOOK

    We are collecting original school yearbooks from the COVID-era school years.

  • SUBMIT YOUR STORY

    We are collecting written memories from parents, students, teachers, and caregivers who experiences school during COVID

  • Help Gather Yearbooks

    Yearbooks from the COVID school years are scattered across homes, schools, and storage rooms. This project depends on people helping locate and gather them.

Artist Statement

The COVID Yearbook Project is a collective archive and art installation documenting how school changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, using original, unedited school yearbooks and first-person stories from parents, students, and educators.

Yearbooks are designed to preserve normalcy. During the pandemic, they quietly absorbed disruption — masks, distancing, hybrid classrooms, missing faces — without commentary or interpretation. When viewed individually, these books feel familiar. When collected and displayed together, they reveal a shared and unprecedented reshaping of childhood.

This project brings COVID-era yearbooks out of private homes and into public space, presenting them unaltered, alongside personal written memories. The intention is not nostalgia, judgment, or revision, but preservation. By pairing institutional records with lived experience, the installation creates a truthful portrait of a moment that is already beginning to fade from collective memory.

The COVID Yearbook Project treats these materials not as keepsakes, but as historical artifacts — evidence of how an entire generation learned, adapted, and grew during a global disruption. This work exists so that the visual and emotional realities of those years are not softened, forgotten, or rewritten.

FAQ

  • We are collecting materials from the COVID- affected school years: 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022

  • We accept:

    K-12 Yearbooks

    Public or Private School

    Any State

    Yearbooks should reflect masked, remote, or hybrid schooling

  • No. All yearbooks are displayed unaltered, with names, photographs, and layouts visible as originally printed.

  • At this time, yearbooks are considered donations to the project and may not be retuned unless explicitly arranged in advance

  • Anyone who experienced school during COVID may submit a story, including:

    Parents and Caregivers

    Students

    Teachers and School Staff

  • Yes! You can help by:

    Sharing this project

    Connecting us with schools, PTAs and alumni groups

    Assisting in locating COVID-era yearbooks

  • Email to request a shipper or send directly to COVID YEARBOOKS

    11811 N. Tatum Blvd Suite 3031 Phoenix,AZ 85028

For questions, press inquiries, or exhibition interest:

macookaz@gmail.com

11811 N. Tatum Blvd Suite 3031 Phoenix,AZ 85028