Oliver Jeffers on plan adjustments
The artist and children's book author tells how Covid derailed his travel and career plans and how he adjusted his life and creative practice
Oliver Jeffers has dreamed of taking a year off for the past decade. So it's worst of luck that his long-debated 12-month sabbatical began just in time to coincide with a global pandemic. According to Jeffers, he and his partner had decided to "stick their elbows out and prepare for a long-awaited 2019-20 hiatus" to squeeze them together before their two children went to elementary school.
Without making any plans, the two decided to stop their lives in New York and go traveling. Jeffers kept his Brooklyn studio up and running but packed his apartment up for a year-long hiatus – albeit with a few projects still underway. In mid-2019, he and his family took an ocean liner to Southampton and then traveled across Europe for several weeks.
Towards the end of the year – and during a trip to Japan – it became clear that something was going wrong. "It was a case of only 48 hours," said Jeffers CR. “Because we were very close to China… there were cases that came up overnight. It was a maximum exodus of tourists from Japan and we were lucky enough to get a flight. At that point, we made up our minds to go back to the west coast of the US – a couple of months and that would be over. "
Jeffers had already planned to visit Dubai and Vancouver in 2020 for a book festival and TED talk. However, when they got to the Oregon coast, things got "strange." After a call from a friend telling him that a European travel ban was coming into effect, along with news that his father had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Jeffers and his wife packed their three bags and flew to Belfast. where he grew up and where he has been since then.