Action Research: The National Festival of CORONAREVAYAT (Corona Narrative) in Iran; An Experience Report and Analysis

The national festival of CORONAREVAYAT (Corona Narrative) took place in the Iran Medical Council during the first peak of Covid-19 and lasted about a year, from April 26, 2020 to March 17, 2021. The festival was designed to provide a platform for networking between artists and health professionals, and to promote documentation in the field of public health. Weakness in epidemic documentation has deep roots in Iran. Thus, CORONAREVAYAT was conducted in the context of the public participation paradigm to increase the social sensitivity regarding documentation in the health sphere, through running a media campaign. Registration of 1022 works in the festival, publication of 10 volumes of books containing the selected works, attracting the professional support of 28 national organizations and the financial support of a private sector, participating in 3 international film festivals and 1 international painting festival, introducing some less-known concepts (e.g., health humanities and narrative medicine) to the public, and networking between artists and therapists can be considered as the most valuable achievements of CORONAREVAYAT, which outweigh its weaknesses (especially organizational bureaucratization). The predominance of image over text can be observed in scrutinizing the works registered in the festival, and can be attributed both to the ease of preparing image-based works with modern digital tools (especially cellphones) and to the greater desire of social media users to share photos and videos compared to text and articles. The least participation was observed in the research section of the festival, in this regard it can be stated that it seems that some concepts (e.g., research) have become so academically entrenched that academics are reluctant to engage in a public media campaign. The ambiguity in the definition of applied research and the negligence of universities in the field of science communication add to the complexity of this issue.