Culture And Memory

UK AIDS Quilt partnership

The UK AIDS Quilt was created in 1989. It commemorates over 550 people who died from HIV/AIDS, each remembered within 350 individually hand-stitched panels. In 2014, seven UK HIV charities formed the UK AIDS Quilt Partnership to protect and preserve the Quilt and its legacy for future generations. This project focuses on three main goals: 1. Documenting and archiving the stories and history of the individuals memorialised in the Quilt, 2. Ensuring the Quilt’s physical preservation through cleaning, conservation, documentation, and appropriate storage, and 3. Increasing public awareness of the Quilt and the history of HIV’s impact on British society by widely displaying the Quilt and encouraging the creation of new quilt panels. Supported by trained community volunteers, these efforts will ensure that the Quilt remains a living, enduring record of the lives lost to AIDS, its impact within the history of HIV activism, and its importance to British heritage.