“Do you remember when the world was on lock down granny?” In the latest in our ongoing Coronavirus Chronicles blog series, Top Banana’s Commercial Director Jemma Peers reflects on how this time can be one to remember and what she’s doing to make memories…

No matter how we look upon this time, there is no denying that it will be remembered in years to come as a momentous historical event.  Whether you live alone, or like me attempting to work from home with the children running around or are away from loved ones due to isolation measures, there are memories to be made and precious moments we will never have again.  I write this after partaking in a team exercise session with 40 Banana’s – that’s just one for the memory bank.

Right now there is fear, grief and sadness all around us, yet, throughout it all, green shoots of hope, courage and a whole lot of bravery is sprouting through. As Her Majesty the Queen said in her address to the world, “better days will return. We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.” It’s those green shoots that personally I choose to focus on and I, as best I can, am trying to make this a time to reflect and make memories.

How the human cognitive system deals with the memorisation process remains at the centre of research. Although we know about the mental process of memory – encoding, retaining, and retrieving information, how our cognitive systems decides what to retain and discard is incredibly complex. In our business we focus on what connects the head and the heart to make the most powerful memories for our audiences – be that during an event, within a comms programme or a film. It can be enhanced by so many things – sound, smell, colour – and that’s what I’m trying to incorporate into my life right now. The years of practice of making messages stick is finally coming into action – how can I, with all of the limitations around me, make this time matter?

In the future our children’s children will learn about this in history lessons and inevitably they will be asked, do you know what happened when the country went into lockdown? We decided as a family to embrace the memories we are making and create our own time capsule – including things we find on our daily walks, the rainbows we painted for our windows, copies of the French lessons I held for my 8 year old son and pictures of the Zoom nights we held with our family and friends.

This is a precious time I have been gifted with my child. Having a busy job and often travelling I am loving daily routine with him and making these moments count.  Don’t get me wrong I can’t wait to have human interaction again and be back at the heart of the industry I love – but for now, I am going to make memories with my family and in all honesty, I don’t want to forget how I am feeling right now.

What will your memories be from the last month and the months to come? If anything stands out – we want to know, as we have decided to create our very own Top Banana Virtual Time Capsule, capturing all the moments that our team members, partners, suppliers and clients would like to remember.  We’d love to include your memories – so send us them over the coming weeks to [email protected] and help us build a virtual time capsule to recognise a time that we will never want to forget.

Never forget, at a time when it could be quite easy to go to get lost in the #$@&%*! – don’t stop making precious memories, because when all said and done we will look back on how we grew from the uncertainty and the positive things that happened because of it.