Now, the 15 songwriters across 11 local government areas have had their music collated into an album by Arts OutWest called While the World Waits.

Among them are Orange musicians Lynda Manwaring and Amy Viola, as well as Millthorpe's Genni Kane.

Lynda Manwaring said her song Tomorrow was written when "like everyone else at the time" she was "sitting around in a coffee stained t-shirt and baggy sweat pants, locked-down and noodling mindlessly on my guitar" and the tune slowly came to her.

Fellow local artist Amy Viola is a classically-trained violist, who works with a loop pedal to layer up rich textures for her song on the album.

"It's Time is the only song I wrote in 2020. It's making a point that we can so easily lose sight of the bigger picture," she explained.

"Off the back of a biological pandemic, fear became far more prevalent than the virus in 2020, and although this moment will take its place in history, we need to remember to remember - that COVID is just one of many pandemics we are suffering from in the world, and it's time to take responsibility."

Genni Kane - Millthorpe's very own ARIA award winner - said her song on the album Trouble We're In "is quite dark for me as I generally look for hope in even the most difficult of situations," but "2020 just floored me."

There's also tracks from Cowra's Josh Maynard, Lueth Ajak (Bathurst), Gavin Bowles (Hampton), Tic-Tok sensation Gabbi Bolt (Bathurst), Adam Enslow (Forbes) and Andy Baylor (Cowra).

While the World Waits is now available from the Arts Out West website.

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