From Anonymous Animals to Animal Crossing: Marie Foulston's lockdown party in a spreadsheet

Freelance Pod

When I saw Marie Foulston's tweet about the lockdown houseparty that she threw in a spreadsheet, I knew that I had to invite her onto the podcast to hear all about it!

Marie is now a freelance creative producer and playful curator, and was most recently Curator of Videogames at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. During her time working there, she was Lead Curator of the 'Videogames: Design/ Play/ Disrupt' exhibition, and you can read more about it in this New York Times piece: 'Playing Games Can Be Hard Work. So Can Choosing Which Ones to Display'.

Marie tells me about the anxiety of organising the spreadsheet party and waiting for her friends to arrive - just like hosting an IRL soirée! The theme of feeling anxious links her shared doc party (which went v. well, thanks for asking, they even watched the sun rise, blissed out) to the mandatory nature of Zoom calls under lockdown, and to the huge success of the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the pandemic.

Her stories of trying to create shared spaces online during the lockdown beg the question: what is the best way to be social when we can't be together?

You can still visit the party on Google Sheets here, but be warned, the document is now locked, and all the cups contain off-brand vodka - sample at your peril...

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On each episode of Freelance Pod, creative guests tell host Suchandrika Chakrabarti how the internet has revolutionised creativity and work.

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