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Locked Down: a Guide to Survival

At the centre of this story is ‘Indaba’ – the name of the wooden bungalow that Imogen and Tony Bedford have called home for the past year. Located just outside of Totnes, Devon, the structure was originally built as a temporary classroom to teach children about permaculture. The site had been abandoned for over 20 years when Imogen and Tony moved in, in which time the beautifully managed garden had transformed into a jungle of laurel. They live free of rent and bills on the condition that they work daily to reclaim the land for the owner. Though the days of teaching permaculture have long gone here, Tony and Imogen do everything they can to live as sustainably and self-sufficiently as possible. This story began as an insight into how the couple live, but with Coronavirus causing the country to go into lockdown whilst I was visiting, the story quickly changed into how three young people could live together in a strange suspended Eden, isolated from the rest of society for a completely unknown length of time. Taking photographs of how we managed to keep up morale, or sometimes not, became a way for us to keep track of our journey as we continued to push towards an unknown goal. This series of photos is a small selection from months of documenting, put together facetiously into a list of steps for our past selves to follow when finding ourselves locked down together.

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