5 things to know about Everyday Heroes

Everyday Heroes was an exhibition that celebrated key workers

And recognised the remarkable contributions that people around the country – among them bus drivers and health workers, refuse collectors and faith workers – made during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It featured newly commissioned artworks and poems by 21 of the UK’s leading artists and poets

These included artists Jeremy Deller, Michael Armitage and Lydia Blakeley; and poets Jackie Kay, Simon Armitage and Raymond Antrobus.

Many of the artists and poets chose to focus on friends, family or people in their local communities

The painter Ryan Mosley depicted his brother Paul, a train driver who continued working during the pandemic; Barbara Walker contributed a painting of her daughter and a series of charcoal drawings of a close friend, both of whom work in the NHS; while Alessandro Raho painted a portrait of Precious, a nurse and close family friend.

One of the writers taking part in Everyday Heroes is a health worker as well as a poet

Romalyn Ante’s ‘Heatwave’, on display on the windows of Royal Festival Hall, is a visceral and affecting poem about her mother, who, like her, works as a nurse.

The exhibition took place outside, across the entire Southbank Centre, transforming the site into an open-air gallery

The striking portraits were reproduced as large-scale posters, some more than six metres high, displayed on the walls and windows of Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Southbank Centre’s Mandela Walk. There were more than 40 portraits in the open-air exhibition.

Everyday Heroes was at the Southbank Centre 4 September – 1 November, 2020.