May 2022

Worst of Times, Best of Times? is a pair of permanent large scale artworks hanging in Kensington and Chelsea Central Library, West London and on digital screens across all Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and Westminster civic spaces.

Commissioned as part of the RBKC’s Summer Festival of Love 2022, which coincided with an easing of lockdown and the tentative ‘opening up’ of communal life, the project elicited detailed responses from over 150 stakeholders about how lockdown and coming out of lockdown affected their reading behaviour.

We asked, what book saved your sanity during lockdown – and did it help; what are you reading now that lockdown is over; and what single thing about these books would you like others to know?

The rich data, collected online and at physical ‘stations’ (when the borough libraries opened) feature as aphorisms in the artworks installed at the entrance to the library as literary epitaphs not only to our collective pandemic experience but also as a reminder of the power and purpose of books in our lives.

Worst of Times, Best of Times? was generously supported by Kensington and Chelsea Library Services.