The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt represents over 600 people lost to HIV and AIDS in the UK. It is part of the world’s largest community art project, begun in the USA in 1985 by activist Cleve Jones to commemorate friends, family and loved ones lost to AIDS. In the late 1980s, Scottish activist Alastair Hume began coordinating the UK Quilt, as others were doing around the world.
Every panel in the Quilt was made by someone who loved the person it remembers. These were people with full lives, passions, friendships and families. At a time when AIDS stigma meant many died unnamed and unmourned in public, the Quilt was an act of defiance. It said these people existed, they mattered, and they will not be forgotten.
The UK Quilt consists of 336 individual panels, most measuring 3ft x 6ft, symbolic of a typical grave plot. Individual panels were stitched together to form larger blocks measuring 12ft x 12ft – each one showing both the sheer scale of loss, and the individual humanity of every life it holds.
Shown in public spaces, the Quilt became an act of remembrance, protest and celebration – a way to force people to look, and to demand action when governments would not.
HIV TODAY
Medical advances have transformed HIV. With effective antiretroviral treatment, people can live healthy, fulfilled lives with the same life expectancy as anyone else. U=U means Undetectable equals Untransmittable: people on effective treatment with an undetectable viral load cannot pass the virus on. There is also now an HIV infection prevention pill, PrEP, free on the NHS.
Yet whilst the science has changed HIV and AIDS, the social barriers remain. Access to treatment and prevention still varies dramatically, both here in the UK and across the globe. It isn’t universally possible or straightforward for everyone living with HIV to have an undetectable viral load.
The Quilt has always held space for everyone affected by HIV, whatever their treatment or status, and everyone deserves support to live as well as possible, whether that’s medical, emotional or financial. Stigma, inequality and a lack of awareness mean this fight is still not over.
Help us make sure the people remembered in the Quilt are never forgotten, and fight for dignity and respect for everyone living with HIV.
UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership
A coalition of seven UK HIV support charities working together to conserve, protect and display the UK Quilt.
Formed in 2014 in response to the risk of the collection deteriorating in storage, the partnership works to find a permanent home for the Quilt, ensure it remains on public display as often as possible, and make sure it continues as a living and lasting testimony to the individual lives lost to AIDS and the social history of HIV activism in the United Kingdom.