Italy was one of the first countries to go into a national lockdown and since March, communities like many others across the world have not been able to get together since the beginning of the year.
In the first few weeks of the pandemic Italian cities' silence was broken by singing and people came together from their windows and balconies.
Singing was used as a coping strategy as well as to improve the sense of cohesion and Dr Elisabetta Corvo, Senior Lecturer in the School of Allied and Public Health Professions, says that greater attention should be paid to the development of social cohesion and ‘to social support in terms of social networks and the development of social capital.’
Dr Corvo’s research has been published in the World Health Organisation’s literature on Covid-19 database as well as the website.
Speaking on her motivations to produce a paper on this, she said: "When friends and family from Italy sent me videos of people singing from the windows, from the balconies in many Italian cities, each with its own peculiarities, I began to reflect on the choice of spontaneous singing to support people during a difficult period.
“An Italian colleague and I decided to develop a commentary about these events drawing upon the analysis and framework within philosophy about society and community.
“Specifically, we linked Tönnies three communities’ concepts to the lack of all these communities during lockdown which led Italians to looking for cohesion and decrease loneliness by joining the neighbourhood and singing.
The article was published in “Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy” (2020) and it has been added to the 'WHO Global Literature on C-19' database on the WHO website.